Re: PKGBASE Removes FreeBSD Base System Feature

> On Aug 7, 2025, at 10:17 PM, Colin Percival <cperciva@freebsd.org> wrote:
> 
> On 8/7/25 18:20, vermaden wrote:
>> OK, Colin Percival just announced 15.0-PRERELEASE - yet the PKGBASE concept - besides 'kinda working' - does not holds to the POLA principle at all - and if anyone will chose to use PKGBASE instead of 'classic' install the 'pkg delete -af' will not only delete all the third party packages but will also WIPE almost ENTIRE BASE SYSTEM of FreeBSD ... this is not unacceptable to say the least.
> 
> POLA is inherently subjective; what astonishes one person might be exactly
> what another person expects.  In this particular case, while someone might
> indeed be astonished that "forcibly delete everything" deletes everything,
> someone else could well be astonished if "pkg delete -f clang" doesn't in
> fact delete clang.
> 
>> My 'vote' here does not changed.
>> Lets keep pkg(8) for third party packages with:
>> - /etc/pkg
>> - /usr/local/etc/pkg
>> - /var/db/pkg
>> Lets have pkgbase(8) for FreeBSD Base System PKGBASE with:
>> - /etc/pkgbase
>> - /usr/local/etc/pkgbase
>> - /var/db/pkgbase
> 
> I would like this idea, except for one wrinkle: I don't think it would work.
> In particular, packages installed from ports might depend on packages from
> the base system, so having a single tool which knows about both is necessary

As someone who does *just enough* work with FreeBSD and has used it since 2.1.6 or so, I would argue that in the past few years I've found myself "astonished" with a number of things, and I think a command that would normally wipe out all non-base components all of a sudden nuking your whole system is "astonishing".

We can dance around how it isn't for say, a developer or a consultant or someone working at a company that's contributing to FreeBSD, but if you want to appeal outside of that highly-technical, highly-focused on FreeBSD (as opposed to generalist sysadmins - hi, it's me!), this whole "if you're too dumb to know everything" or "not engaged enough" to be on (and actually read) multiple mailing lists, the forums, the Foundation's newsletter, and a few random wiki pages (plus I'm sure other new outlets I haven't paid attention to, what is the project really doing? Is the wish to be a niche OS that needn't bother with new users or is it to broaden the base of users outside the community?

I really can't wrap my head around all the arguments against doing something, anything, to be kinder to a new user (or less-obsessed old user). So many people on this team are well into adulthood, and as I hit my 40's, I can tell you I dropped a LOT of that attitude I see on the lists, forums, and IRC that's just a foot stomp and a dismissive "RTFM!" whenever someone hasn't reached some arbitrary bar of minimum knowledge to use a FreeBSD system without things blowing up on them for making assumptions like the one this thread is about. I genuinely don't get the pushback. I don't know the hierarchy of the players involved here or who's ultimately in charge, but I don't get why *this* hill is the one people are choosing to die on. Help me understand this. I know for certain I'm someone that would be "astonished" to find my base nuked by a previously safe command. Maybe I'm not worthy of the OS, I don't know? :)

Charles

> -- 
> Colin Percival
> FreeBSD Release Engineering Lead & EC2 platform maintainer
> Founder, Tarsnap | www.tarsnap.com | Online backups for the truly paranoid
> 
>