Is pkg quarterly really needed?

[Ethan Grammatikidis]

On Tue, Apr 18, 2017, at 02:54 PM, qjail1 wrote:
> I maintain a port and I have users complaining that the pkg system takes 
> many months before the updated version of my port shows up in the pkg 
> system.
> 
> My response is I tell them to change a line in their 
> /etc/pkg/FreeBSD.conf file
> from url: "pkg+http://pkg.Freebsd.org/${ABI}/quarterly",
> to   url: "pkg+http://pkg.Freebsd.org/${ABI}/latest",
> 
> The old pkg system never had this quarterly update cycle and I see no 
> reason to have it now when its so easy to over ride the default.
> 
> Why not just change the default to "latest" and save on all the overhead 
> of the quarterly cycle?

I have to say that if pkg abandoned the cautious update cycle, I'd abandon FreeBSD. I've really had enough of constant upgrades. The one thing I have which needs constant upgrades is a Flash video downloader. I keep that in ~/bin and use its built-in upgrade mechanism when required, which is simple. I don't need to get it via some root-only mechanism. It doesn't have a man page of course, but --help|less is easy enough.