pkgbase: upgrading (was: FreeBSD 15.0-BETA4 Now Available)

On 01/11/2025 22:07, vermaden wrote:

> Hi.
>
> Please add PKGBASE update/upgrade instructions to future announcements.
>
> It is advertised in all possible places that freebsd-update(8) will go away and that PKGBASE - while still in Tech Preview phase - is the future.
>
> I propose a first draft of these instructions:


…

> === PKGBASE Upgrading ===
>
> The PKGBASE utility supports binary upgrades of amd64, i386, and aarch64 systems running earlier FreeBSD releases.  Systems running earlier FreeBSD releases can upgrade by first installing any updates for the currently running release:
>
> 	# pkg update -f
> 	# pkg upgrade -r FreeBSD-base; service sshd restart
>
> The system must be rebooted with the newly installed kernel before
> continuing.
>
> 	# shutdown -r now


freebsd-update(8) will be used. I might have read (I don't know where; 
not found in FreeBSD list archives) that the next step will depend upon 
security and other aspects of the new repo.

pkgbase is not a utility.

A normal update should not require --force.

The upgrade above may silently lose the user's preference for latest.

For an upgrade to the kernel: excluding non-base kernel modules (e.g. 
FreeBSD-ports-kmods) is not ideal.

For earlier versions such as 14.3 and 14-STABLE that already use 
pkgbase: current approaches to the major upgrade are varied, sometimes 
complex, not conventional. Not yet fit for releng documentation, IMHO.