[FreeBSD-Announce] FreeBSD Errata Notice FreeBSD-EN-14:03.pkg

[Dave Duchscher]

On Jun 16, 2014, at 8:22 AM, Paul Mather <freebsd-lists at gromit.dlib.vt.edu> wrote:

> 
> On Jun 16, 2014, at 7:59 AM, Baptiste Daroussin <bapt at FreeBSD.org> wrote:
> 
>> On Sun, Jun 15, 2014 at 07:12:21AM -0500, Dave Duchscher wrote:
>>> I have had a few surprises with FreeBSD over the years and with the new ports system has provided quite a few of them but this update takes the cake.  We have our own package repository with custom options.  We liked and adopted pkgng early.  We also have a lot of automation. With this update, all of a sudden, we have a new repository configured on our system (/etc/FreeBSD.conf).  Lets say, I was very surprised.  It is true that mistakes happen. Maybe its ours for not fully understand what was being done. In any event, this definitely caused lots of issues for us and has wasted a lot of my time.
>>> 
>>> Dave
>>> 
>> 
>> I'm really sorry to hear that, how could we have improved our communication to
>> reduce the inpact on users like the one you had? (what would you have expected?)
> 
> 
> It would have been nice if the Errata Notice had contained information 
> about disabling the newly-enabled FreeBSD repo.  In my case, I was 
> already aware of the issue, because I have some FreeBSD 10 systems.  
> For my FreeBSD 8 and 9 systems, the workaround after installing the 
> FreeBSD-EN-14:03.pkg Errata was simply a matter of doing this:
> 
> 	echo "FreeBSD: { enabled: no }" > /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/FreeBSD.conf
> 
> as it instructs in the /etc/pkg/FreeBSD.conf repo file that is 
> installed.
> 
> I use my own pkg repo, built via Poudriere (thank you, Bapt!), which is 
> why I elected to disable the newly-installed FreeBSD repo.  It's not 
> clear to me how multiple repos interact under pkgng, or how you can 
> assign priorities to repos or protect packages installed from one repo 
> from being upgraded by packages from another.  That's the main reason 
> in my case why I normally disable the default FreeBSD repo and just use 
> my Poudriere-maintained one.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Paul.

This is pretty much my feelings on this particular issue.  I will add that the notice should have been more direct and warn that this new repo may conflict with private repos that may be installed.  Communication is hard and sometimes you just have to hit us busy people over the head.

Dave