Date: Wed, 01 Jul 2026 12:57:13 +0000 From: Larry Fahnoe <fahnoe@fahnoetech.com> To: Alexander Ziaee <ziaee@FreeBSD.org> Cc: Roger Marquis <marquis@roble.com>, freebsd-pkgbase <freebsd-pkgbase@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: None of "man freebsd-base" (or "man pkgbase"), "man pkg-upgrade", or "man pkg-install" deal with documenting .pkgsave and/or .pkgnew behavior or how to handle such Message-ID: <Totf3jwo9_2gIEq6WRkiZel_OK54y4TY_DxkOW5CePGlkSthO3S_0cUuTCNeEaW673tTQDvBAzgpbc8o0Uu49mb3A-nc0GMT-Juf4MN4amE=@fahnoetech.com> In-Reply-To: <E1wefJq-000633-G1@rmmprod06.runbox>
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On Tuesday, June 30th, 2026 at 6:04 PM, Alexander Ziaee <ziaee@FreeBSD.org> wrote: > I think we all agree that operators should always do all of their chores promptly, so we put an entire section on this in the official FreeBSD 15.1 upgrading docs :) > > One of the principles in the doc project is that the docs are always buggy. In this case, I'm struggling with how to make it clearer without making it less accessible. > > If we put a tip box at the bottom of the section saying "tip: other operating systems also do this, they just don't tell you", I think that would be a bit condescending and also outside the scope of the doc. > > People get fatigued easily when they detect irrelevant information or hit patches of much higher information density. Then they start skipping and miss important stuff, and the ecosystem is much worse off. > > Again, this is the same behavior I see in all other similar operating systems, the only difference I see is that we are instructing all operators to address it during the scheduled downtime as part of the approved upgrade process, and we are documenting files in the reference manual. But the docs certainly have massive room for improvement! > > Best, > Alex > When I noted Mark's suggestion about pkg reporting non-zero counts of *.pkgnew and *.pkgsave files, I felt it was a very worthwhile suggestion, thus my seconding or endorsing his suggestion. My bringing up my own sysadmin experience on other operating systems did not add meaningfully to the conversation and has needlessly stirred the pot. I believe this to be a pkg issue, and downstream of that a documentation issue. I agree, referencing other operating systems in the FreeBSD documentation is probably not helpful. >> On Monday, June 29th, 2026, Mark Millard <marklmi@yahoo.com> wrote: >> >>> I have suggested elsewhere that the last of the output from those >>> commands should probably list the counts of each of *.pkgnew and >>> *.pkgave such files generated for any where the count is positive. >>> That would make a good prompt to go looking --and allow avoiding >>> looking when none were generated. --Larryhome | help
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