Re: RFC: Renaming "FreeBSD" repo in /etc/pkg/FreeBSD.conf to "FreeBSD-ports"

On Tue, 19 Aug 2025 17:51:22 -0700
Colin Percival <[email protected]> wrote:

> On 8/19/25 17:44, Mark Millard wrote:
> > On Aug 19, 2025, at 17:25, Colin Percival <[email protected]> wrote:
> >> Right, I don't see any reason for having separate files.  If I thought people
> >> might want to delete one of them (e.g. rm /etc/pkg/FreeBSD-base.conf in order
> >> to disable pkgbase) then I would separate them; but the recommended way to
> >> disable a repository is with an {enabled: no} in /usr/local/etc/pkg/ so I
> >> don't see any need to separate these.
> > 
> > Will a pkgbase repo be present and enabled by default?
> > present but disabled? Not present at all in
> > /etc/pkg/FreeBSD.conf ?
> > 
> > (I'm not trying to specify spelling for such here. But your
> > note might be better with this intended spelling also
> > being explicit so how it all fits together is more
> > clear.)
> > 
> > If /etc/pkg/FreeBSD.conf is intended not to be edited at all
> > by default, that might have implications for some default
> > content there or inside /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/ someplace
> > if pkgbase is not enabled by default.
> > 
> > (My understanding is that pkgbase is off by default.)
> 
> pkgbase is off by default in 14 but will be on by default in 15.  People will
> need it to update their systems for security updates, for example, since
> freebsd-update is going away (at least in its present form -- it might turn
> into a wrapper around pkg).

+1 for keeping freebsd-update as a wrapper both for legacy and pkgbase.
It would help users still need legacy (pre-pkgbase) version inside jail
and/or bhyve that are installed from outside of jail / bhyve.
Also, upgrading legacy version to pkgbase'ified version would be in
consideration.

Considering the use-cases with existing scripts in the wild, legacy
options would be better kept as-is and introducing new option to use
pkgbase. So would be bsdinstall. But once all non-pkgbase versions
become EoL, the considerations would no longer mandatory.


> Users who want to update the base system from another source (no pun intended)
> will need to configure their systems appropriately.
> 
> -- 
> Colin Percival
> FreeBSD Release Engineering Lead & EC2 platform maintainer
> Founder, Tarsnap | www.tarsnap.com | Online backups for the truly paranoid


-- 
Tomoaki AOKI    <[email protected]>