Consider using pkgbase

[probonopd]

Consider using pkgbase once helloSystem is built on FreeBSD 13.

https://alpha.pkgbase.live/ is the unofficial repository for the FreeBSD PkgBase project.

Pros

• It may be possible to build smaller ISOs with a slimmer "BSD subsystem" (this would be very welcome given our constraint that the ISO must be <2 GB)

Cons

• https://alpha.pkgbase.live/ is not official FreeBSD and hence may not be supported by the FreeBSD core developers
• Are there any guarantees that it will still be there tomorrow?

I am probably missing many points since all of this is still very new to me, so please feel free to comment below. I will update the summary above accordingly.

[grahamperrin]

For clarity:

… not official FreeBSD …

– that describes the alpha.pkgbase.live repository (should not be taken as a description of PkgBase).

We have, for example, the FreeBSD-provided mailing list for PkgBase. Linked from the list:

• ⚙ D25984 pkgbase: Add incremental package

– with https://cgit.freebsd.org/src/commit/?id=0ac8aa55da1cb5e53a9102fd007dd01ee6d17894 committed to main.

Plus https://reviews.freebsd.org/tag/pkgbase/ – @igalic is in very good company there … and so on. I should view all such things as official.

Thoughts

To the best of my knowledge:

• there is no significant proposed alternative to PkgBase
• PkgBase is the way to go.

(Why does there appear to be not much impetus behind PkgBase? I guess, no rush for the FreeBSD community to abandon freebsd-update(8) because "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". Whilst being thrown into the command line (sometimes including vi) might surprise, or shock, people who are accustomed to a GUI for operating system updates and upgrades: the command line is an acceptable norm for a significant proportion of the FreeBSD community.)

Documentation

https://wiki.freebsd.org/PkgBase is significantly outdated. As many wiki pages do become :-) From https://wiki.freebsd.org/action/info/PkgBase?action=info

For starters (trivial): remove the 2017 "ETA?". This page will benefit for from a non-trivial re-write to reflect ongoing work in and around the FreeBSD community.

[igalic]

my plan is, indeed, to overhaul that wiki. or at least get rid of the wrong and confusing or outdated information

I've been using https://alpha.pkgbase.live/howto/ for prototyping better documentation.

perhaps what's in the wiki can be reduced to the TODOs and concrete calls to action, and my documentation could even be put into the handbook?

[grahamperrin]

Cool!

Some readers will (naturally) rush into things without attempting to get the big picture, so somewhere near the head of https://alpha.pkgbase.live/index.html you might add:

• just one unmistakable ⚠ yellow alert paragraph

– emphasising the importance of not shooting oneself in the foot. If this means explicitly directing the reader to use bectl(8) then say something like "Good use of ZFS boot environments is a must" and link to the relevant page (or an anchor therein).

Don't expect all readers to actually click the Howtos link near the head of the main page :-)

Whilst I have not yet gone through any page in detail, my first impressions were that things are written in a way that can make the user unafraid to revisit 🏆

[grahamperrin]

https://github.com/helloSystem/ISO/issues/166#issuecomment-787130219 for clarity:

• PkgBase is the way to go.

– I mean, it is the way to go for FreeBSD.

[grahamperrin]

https://github.com/helloSystem/hello/issues/161#issuecomment-927250627

[grahamperrin]

https://mastodon.social/@bapt/111532837806049398

[probonopd]

Looks like this is a thing now. Is there a list of the packages conatined in pkgbase? Or is this literally just one package called "base"?

[igalic]

the idea is to install pretty much everything (except for the things you don't need)

pkg search -r FreeBSD-base -g FreeBSD-\* | \
  grep -Ev '-dbg|-test' | \
  xargs pkg install -y

[probonopd]

Thanks @igalic. Interesting! Is there a list of the available packages somewhere?

[0hip]

Thanks @igalic. Interesting! Is there a list of the available packages somewhere?

From: https://wiki.freebsd.org/PkgBase

In addition, to aid exploration and adoption, an unofficial repository https://pkg.freebsd.evilham.com/images is provided by Evilham (Andrés).

could this be what you are looking for? https://pkg.freebsd.evilham.com/images/FreeBSD%3A14%3Aamd64/latest/

[igalic]

I think that probably needs to be removed. everything you need should be on top. that is, https://pkg.freebsd.org/${ABI}/base_release_0

[probonopd]

https://pkg.freebsd.org/FreeBSD:14:amd64/base_release_0/ lists the packages indeed. Thank you very much!