From owner-freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Fri Jul 24 21:16:00 2015 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@mailman.ysv.freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) by mailman.ysv.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 762989AA14B for ; Fri, 24 Jul 2015 21:16:00 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from lifanov@mail.lifanov.com) Received: from mail.lifanov.com (mail.lifanov.com [206.125.175.12]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (Client did not present a certificate) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 637B41E57 for ; Fri, 24 Jul 2015 21:16:00 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from lifanov@mail.lifanov.com) Received: by mail.lifanov.com (Postfix, from userid 58) id 7EB081F68AF; Fri, 24 Jul 2015 17:15:53 -0400 (EDT) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.1 (2015-04-28) on mail.lifanov.com X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.0 required=5.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,SHORTCIRCUIT shortcircuit=ham autolearn=disabled version=3.4.1 Received: from app.lifanov.com (chat.lifanov.com [206.125.175.13]) by mail.lifanov.com (Postfix) with ESMTPA id F0D7A1CB366 for ; Fri, 24 Jul 2015 17:15:52 -0400 (EDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Fri, 24 Jul 2015 17:15:52 -0400 From: Nikolai Lifanov To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: help me understand latest->quarterly pkg.conf switch Message-ID: X-Sender: lifanov@mail.lifanov.com User-Agent: Roundcube Webmail/1.1.2 X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.20 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 24 Jul 2015 21:16:00 -0000 I noticed that in stable/10, /etc/pkg/FreeBSD.conf was switched from using latest package set to whichever one that is "quarterly" word is pointing to at the moment. What is the motivation for this change? Quarterly package sets are useful if the end-user is able to pick which one to pull from and there is some amount of time of support overlap so that the user has time to validate the new package set and switch his systems to it (like what is done with pkgsrc). As-is, "quarterly" works just like "latest" from end-user perspective, but for most of the lifecycle packages are outdated and there is a massive update bomb four times per year. Port branches are still valuable to those building their own packages, since they can support the previous (unsupported by the project) branch, backporting fixes manually, while validating and upgrading to the new one. But, what is the value of the quarterly package set as-is and what is the value of switching to this set by default? - Nikolai Lifanov