Why pkg offers different versions of packages on two machines?

[Rafal Lukawiecki]

Apologies for another newbie question. Trying to get my head around package management.

If I run "pkg search certbot" using the official AWS FreeBSD 11.1-RELEASE image it finds:

	py27-certbot-0.16.0_1,1        Let's Encrypt client

but if run the same search using my locally installed FreeBSD, which happens to be a slightly older, 11.0-STABLE, I find the newer (which also happens to be the current) version of that package:

	py27-certbot-0.17.0,1          Let's Encrypt client

In both cases pkg.conf and the repo config are the same, with all the settings at their unchanged by me defaults (url: "pkg+http://pkg.FreeBSD.org/${ABI}/quarterly”). Both versions of pkg itself are the same. As far as I can see, I am resolving to the same mirror in both cases, as I see the same IP (213.138.116.73) when I ping pkg.freebsd.org.

When I manually navigate to http://pkg.freebsd.org/FreeBSD:11:amd64/quarterly/All/ I can see the older version of the package (py27-certbot-0.16.0_1,1) on the server. When I navigate to the latest tree (http://pkg.freebsd.org/FreeBSD:11:amd64/latest/All/) I can see the newer package in there.

Why does my locally installed pkg find the newer version if both configs point to the same, quarterly, repo URL?

Many thanks,
Rafal
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Rafal Lukawiecki
Data Scientist 
Project Botticelli Ltd