Re: Why is /usr/tests part of binary installs/upgrades?

On 6/12/25 12:32, Patrick M. Hausen wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> on my large production servers in the DC I couldn't care less about
> a small directory with a bunch of (for me) unnecessary files.
> 
> But on my tiny Raspberry Pi cluster at home I delete all of
> 
> - /usr/lib32
> - /usr/lib/debug
> - /usr/tests
> 
> to save as much as possible of that 32G of eMMC space.
> 
> 
> I just upgraded the Pis to 14.3 and I don't understand why every
> 
> 	freebsd-update upgrade -r ...
> 	freebsd-update install
> 	shutdown -r now
> 	freebsd-update install
> 
> first repopulates /usr/tests and then bitches about e.g.
> 
> 	Installing updates...install: ///usr/tests/lib/libc/stdlib: No such file or directory
> ?
> 
> The man page tests(7) has a section right at the top: "Installing the test suite".
> 
> I think this should not be part of default binary installs and neither of upgrades ever.

   My understanding is the test suite helps watch for regressions, 
system bugs, etc. The installer offers to install the test suite but 
last I checked it defaults to off. Some of its tests depend on 3rd party 
ports to further be installed separately. I'm not sure what decisions 
are made for premade installs.
   I don't have a lot of freebsd-update experience but have you reviewed 
freebsd-update.conf modules is at a minimum?
   If you haven't tried it out yet, I'd keep an eye on pkgbase which 
will use pkg to give you control of what is installed/uninstalled from 
base without having to build it custom from source. Not sure how updates 
will compare for size and resulting disk I/O.

> What's the purpose on a production system?
> 
> Kind regards,
> Patrick