CFT: FreeBSD Package Base

[Franco Fichtner]

> On 30. Apr 2019, at 2:25 AM, Cy Schubert <Cy.Schubert at cschubert.com> wrote:
> 
> As for updating, freebsd-update is mostly there to accomplish your requirement without pkgbase. Which begs the question,  if we're simply replacing freebsd-update and it does most of what we want why the extra effort? Unless we want to solve more than just this problem? Which BTW I think we do.

There's hbsd-update, pfSense-upgrade and opnsense-update precisely
because pkgbase was pulled ever since it's first ETA in 11.0 and
the subsequent non-delivery.  freebsd-update is not the answer.

Speaking for opnsense-update[1] specifically it's a shell script
with a bit of bloat for handling package updates as normal and
otherwise use base.txz and kernel.txz and arbitrary signatures
in pkg (built upon the idea of pkg.txz.sig) to verify their signature
directly linked to the fingerprints of the pkg repo used -- all well
under 1000 LOC counting whitespaces for readability and battle-
proven since 2015.

My point is simply this:

The sole focus on "the" pkgbase that will solve all issues and the
unwillingness to cooperate on "pkgbase" at the same time has made the
situation much much worse than it should have been for FreeBSD users
and blocked the road for other types of improvements in the update
area for a number of years now.

It's time to step up instead of further dividing the topic so I
want to thank Kris for his effort very much.


Cheers,
Franco

[1] https://raw.githubusercontent.com/opnsense/update/master/update/opnsense-update.sh