Pkg upgrade tries to remove KDE!

[Beastie]

I wasn't aware that 'latest' in this context boils down to 'nightly'.

Had this happen to me a few days ago when I've tried out latest repos to find some missing software from quarterly (since my device is made for experiments like this), and, weirdly enough, I was lucky enough for a solution to be as simple as reverting to quarterly repositories and running upgrade -f for it to see plasma packages again and successfully reinstall them. So yeah, be more careful when trying "latest" branch, cause I can't recommend anyone trying what I've tried, this was cursed lol.

There is a slight misconception that must be addressed.

The FreeBSD project is centrally managed by a team, while the ports tree is decentralized to several hundreds of maintainers.

When a FreeBSD release is made, a new branch is created — whether it's the more reliable -RELEASE (made for production), or the less reliable -CURRENT and -STABLE (meant to be tinkered with). The case is not so for the ports tree: there is only one ports tree for everything, no matter if you're using 14.3-RELEASE, or 15.0-STABLE, or 16.0-CURRENT.
When it comes to ports, while everyone hopes to make things run smoothly, in reality this isn't always the case. If things work out well, packages for all ports are built for each and every ABI/architecture. If they don't, well...

Just because snapshot releases default to the latest repository while -RELEASEs default to the quarterly repository, that doesn't necessarily mean that one is less stable and reliable than the other. You can be using latest for many years and never encounter any problem, as long as you are careful. pkg will tell you exactly what it is installing, updating and removing.

Recently, some programs depended on a newer release of ffmpeg, which meant that web browsers and multimedia players were failing to build until the right patches were made. Some users ended up updating their packages and removing essential ones in the process.
If you can find a package in one repository and not the other, it only means that it just happens that package X is still available in one and has not yet been removed from the other. If a problem persists for an entire quarter, you'll have missing packages in the quarterly repository as well. For example www/ungoogled-chromium has been failing to build for months and it's missing from all repositories if I'm not mistaken.

 

[sarahquartz]

You can be using latest for many years and never encounter any problem, as long as you are careful. pkg will tell you exactly what it is installing, updating and removing.

Yeah, that's what I meant as well, if you're careful, they are okay, maybe I should have worded that more clearly

If a problem persists for an entire quarter, you'll have missing packages in the quarterly repository as well. For example www/ungoogled-chromium has been failing to build for months and it's missing from all repositories if I'm not mistaken.

Definitely agree, quarterly isn't safe from this either, but I feel like in quarterly it moreso happens to less important packages (or, not as important as a desktop-environment, although if there are examples of this too, feel free to correct me, this is just my experience). As an example that quarterly isn't safe from this, I seem to not be able to find deltachat-desktop package in this quarterly that we have as of writing this post, it's only available as a port (i.e. it needs compiling), or obs-studio from quarterly just crashes with "couldn't create qapplication" (maybe I should create a dedicated thread for that, now that I think about it).

 

[AlfredoLlaquet]

At the time, installing Xlibre also would remove KDE Plasma. I guess it's just a matter of waiting some more days, but just wanted to report it.

 

[AlfredoLlaquet]

Curiously enough, the above also happens trying to install Xlibre on FreeBSD 14.3 release p8. I just tried on my laptop, which is still running 14.3.p8.
Feb. 7th, 2026: No change.

 

[zester]

I had the same thing happen I installed something, forget what it was and pkg uninstalled gnome and everything else. I thought I had a bad drive.

 

[baaz]

It is sad to see that this is still happening.

To clear things up this problem is not rooted in XLibre or any of its ports it is caused by a couple of lines in the port plasma6-plasma-desktop's Makefile that have made it superfluously depend on a X.Org driver in RUNTIME, creating this conflict.

I have discussed this at length in the porting thread, even went as far as creating visual diagrams for it.

Post in thread 'Porting X11Libre to FreeBSD.'

Dec 19, 2025

OK, some more technical stuff.
I have found a better, more elegant solution to the KDE problem.

The entire reason that the KDE x11/plasma6-plasma-desktop port can't be installed alongside xlibre-server is due to its RUNTIME dependency on X.Org drivers:

x11-drivers/xf86-input-libinput

and

x11-drivers/xf86-input-evdev


Now why is there a dependency on these two drivers in the first place?

It is because of the diabolical scheme that was put into place for communicating default values of properties associated with xf86-input-* drivers to the input configuration...

• baaz

• 
• 

Post in thread 'Porting X11Libre to FreeBSD.'

Dec 30, 2025

So as far as I understand it, we need to compile x11/plasma6-plasma-desktop manually, since the X11 option is on per default, right?

Sadly yes.
The commit that added that "X11" option referenced the closed XLibre PR, but it failed to actually fix the underlying problem causing the conflict (the default RUN_TIME dependency on xf86- drivers).

I've commented on the thread:

Making sure you're not a bot!

There has not been any response yet.

In the meantime. the modded plasma6-plasma-desktop found in my overlay could be used...

• baaz

• 

But our PR to the KDE team (which was opened silmulteiniously with the addtion of XLIbre to ports) regarding this issue was cloased and subsequent comments are still left without a response. A commit refrencing the PR was made, but it only shifted the issue to a OPTION instead of fixing it.

The PR thread:

Making sure you're not a bot!

In the meantime my overlay could be used. I have a fixed version of plasma6-plasma-desktop included in it:

xlibre-ports/x11/plasma6-plasma-desktop at master · b-aaz/xlibre-ports

An effort for porting XLibre to FreeBSD & DragonFlyBSD. - b-aaz/xlibre-ports

github.com

This is not an optimal situation, and I do not know when will they fix this simple issue.

The other sad part about this situation is that if the KDE port was fixed when our PR was made, it would have made it to the 2026Q1, but it was not fixed, and we are now stuck with a broken KDE in the current quarterly, even if they decide to fix it now.