Do I want to switch to the new pkg(8) format?

[Bigby James]

On 12/26, Warren Block wrote:
> > That message is only for folks upgrading a pre-10.0 installation. If you
> > installed 10.0 or later, any binary packages you install will use the new
> > format.
> 
> As will ports.  pkg is not just for binary packages, it is a package 
> management system and ports use it also.

True enough. I usually prefer install and upgrade software from the ports tree,
but use 'pkg delete <package> && pkg autoremove' to get rid of unwanted build
dependencies and/or software I only installed for testing purposes. Uniting both
binary and source software management under a single system is a huge plus in my
opinion.

The OP mentioned being a Gentoo user, but the current state of package/ports
management in FreeBSD is quite similar to that of Arch Linux: software may be
installed either via binary packages or built from source code, but both means
utilize a shared database and building ports now stores a binary package in a
local cache. It seems perfectly sensible to install most software from packages
and use the ports system just for build customizations. The only hitch I see is
that if you build software from ports and then update your system with 'pkg
upgrade,' pkgng will reinstall your customized ports with default settings.
There may be a way to avoid this, but either the man page doesn't mention it or
I've overlooked it.

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