[CFT] packaging the base system with pkg(8)

[Matthew Grooms]

On 4/19/2016 3:09 PM, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
> As far as I know, nobody is taking the source code or the Makefiles
> away, so if somebody doesn't like the system being distributed with
> pkg, they can very well roll their own.
>
> It's nice to see the level of enthusiasm the FreeBSD project can
> muster, I just wish it wasn't always enthusiasm for stopping progress.
>

Maybe I missed an email in this thread, but I don't recall anyone 
completely rejecting the idea of packaging the base system. What I see 
is a discussion related to doing it in the best way possible.

I suspect that most of the negative reactions people are having is due 
to the line being blurred between the base system and everything else. 
Historically there has always been a clear distinction. By packaging 
base and throwing it in with everything else, you erase that 
distinction. I suspect that if the 'base is different' concept was 
preserved in a more fundamental way, there would be less resistance. 
After all, is there that much difference between trusting freebsd-update 
to patch X files vs trusting pkg to update X packaged files?

What if there were two classes of packages, base and general? To 
interact with a base package set, perhaps an additional command line 
argument could be required. If you do a 'pkg info' after an install, an 
empty package set is shown. If you do a 'pkg info --base' ( or whatever 
) instead, you see the base package set installed. If you need to get 
back to just the base system, you run 'pkg delete *' without the --base 
arg. In other words, base retains it's distinction and pkg pretty much 
works the same as it does now ( without the new argument ).

-Matthew