Date: Sat, 09 Aug 2025 12:19:04 -0700 From: "Pat Maddox" <pat@patmaddox.com> To: "Brandon Allbery" <allbery.b@gmail.com>, "DutchDaemon - FreeBSD Forums Administrator" <DutchDaemon@freebsd.org> Cc: "freebsd-stable@freebsd.org" <freebsd-stable@freebsd.org>, "FreeBSD CURRENT" <freebsd-current@freebsd.org>, freebsd-pkgbase@freebsd.org Subject: Re: PKGBASE Removes FreeBSD Base System Feature Message-ID: <90f83695-286f-4e95-b2a4-98e1cae5da4e@app.fastmail.com> In-Reply-To: <CAKFCL4UW%2B=5zSHZK4f=_XE7=M1285gysV2HVkEXK3zbAbyU3Kw@mail.gmail.com> References: <79429D6B-7948-4D27-9F14-664CC075547A@FreeBSD.org> <EA7F6AC8-CCFF-4F59-AD51-57AED93E5A23@codenetworks.net> <7D0CD326-0CB0-41F0-99C2-BFEB9F4DC1EA@FreeBSD.org> <81470e1f-5a91-453b-a1aa-20a7e9fb8855@FreeBSD.org> <33CC4995-5B1D-4640-A5B0-2E7AD599D5BA@FreeBSD.org> <ff8d932c-b386-4d52-b4f9-4f5a47fa0cb2@FreeBSD.org> <CAKFCL4UW%2B=5zSHZK4f=_XE7=M1285gysV2HVkEXK3zbAbyU3Kw@mail.gmail.com>
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On Fri, Aug 8, 2025, at 8:44 AM, Brandon Allbery wrote: > On Fri, Aug 8, 2025 at 11:30 AM DutchDaemon - FreeBSD Forums > Administrator <DutchDaemon@freebsd.org> wrote: >> (trying to see the upside) > > As stated earlier in the thread: embedded hardware which wants as > minimal a base system as they can get away with. The flip side of the > all-encompassing base system is that it's *big*. And grown considerably > since the early days, making the early-days management of base a > problem now. I understand where you're coming from. It's also doable today, right? You set the knobs you want in src.conf and make.conf, and you get a smaller base system. I assume this is reasonable for people doing custom embedded hardware systems. Fine-grained packages makes it more convenient to do this, without having to build base yourself. One question I have is, does this make things more broadly effective? One of the reasons I came back to FreeBSD is precisely because in Linux container land, I had no idea what the system was running. The OS could be alpine or debian. Someone could have decided that `ps` shouldn't be installed (true story, that was fun to debug). Core utils are installed with busybox, so grep flags match neither GNU nor BSD, and scripts break. Today, I can say "It's a FreeBSD system, I know this." [1] I immediately know what its base capabilities are, and what its enhanced capabilities are through third-party software. I suppose that will remain true, the only thing being that it will have fewer base capabilities out of the box. Additional capabilities then behave more like third-party software, just provided and tested by the project. Pat [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFUlAQZB9Nghome | help
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