CFT: FreeBSD Package Base

[Christoph Moench-Tegeder]

## Lars Engels (lars.engels at 0x20.net):

> > What are the plans to get rid of the hellscape known as “mergemaster”?
> > Is there anything exciting and new there either in base or any of the
> > ixSystems projects?
> 
> There's /usr/sbin/etcupdate in base.

Unfortunately, the official documentation on upgrades does not mention
etcupdate at all. The release notes point to freebsd-update for binary
upgrades, and to /usr/src/UPDATING for source-based upgrades. UPDATING
only documents the mergemaster procedure; etcupdate is only mentioned
in a few entries without any detail. The Handbook (chapter 25.3) only
documents mergemaster. Even after speed-reading etcupdate(8) I'm not
sure how the two-step invocation of mergemaster has to be mapped to
etcupdate - I feel I'd be inventing my own procedure here (and, of
course, if it breaks I get to keep all the pieces).

This situation should be improved. Given that etcupdate is in all
supported releases, we can even update UPDATING and the Handbook.
So, does anyone have a pointer to the official procedure?

Regards,
Christoph

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