Re: FreeBSD 15.0-ALPHA4 Now Available

On 9/27/25 13:59, Patrick M. Hausen wrote:
>> Am 27.09.2025 um 22:34 schrieb Colin Percival <cperciva@freebsd.org>:
>>
>> === Upgrading ===
>>
>> FREEBSD-UPDATE SHOULD NOT BE USED TO UPGRADE TO 15.0-ALPHA4 AT PRESENT.
> 
> Does that mean updated packages for base will be available, eventually,
> and I can `pkg upgrade` ALPHA3 to ALPHA4 - or is that always a fresh install?

The freebsd-update bits for ALPHA4 should arrive later in the weekend, and
freebsd-update from ALPHA3 to ALPHA4 will be safe.

Upgrading using pkgbase is probably fine, subject to the usual considerations
such as "you're getting a nightly build of stable/15, not precisely the bits
released as ALPHA4".

Lexi wrote:
> what's not supported is upgrading to 15.0 (from any release) using
> freebsd-update(8), due to a bug that can install libraries in the
> wrong order and leave the system broken.  this will be fixed in a
> later alpha release.  (actually, i thought the fix was in ALPHA4,
> but possibly it didn't make it or hasn't received enough testing
> yet.)

The fix is in ALPHA4, but freebsd-update needs to be fixed on the system
being upgraded *from*.  So there will be an Errata Notice coming out soon
to provide the fixed freebsd-update on FreeBSD {13.5, 14.2, 14.3}.

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