pkg vs pkg-static

Mayhem30 · Jul 23, 2017

What is the difference between using pkg and pkg-static?

I'm planning to update my home machine to FreeBSD 11 and noticed this in the docs :

Code:

23.2.3.2. Upgrading Packages After a Major Version Upgrade

A forced upgrade of all installed packages will replace the packages with fresh versions from the repository even if the version number has not increased.
This is required because of the ABI version change when upgrading between major versions of FreeBSD.

The forced upgrade can be accomplished by performing:

# pkg-static upgrade -f

https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handboo...freebsdupdate.html#freebsdupdate-portsrebuild

Why are the docs recommending to use pkg-static?

Jov · Jul 23, 2017

pkg-static do not depend on libssl.so etc which may change when upgrade, so it always functionable. The static means static link, most liberaries are included in the binary, while pkg use dynamic link.

morsing · Mar 12, 2023

Jov said:
[...] so it always functionable. [...]

It would be nice if it was actually installed on a freshly installed system. Where is it meant to come from?

Alain De Vos · Mar 12, 2023

If i'm not wrong pkg-static is part of "base" and pkg is part of "ports".
pkg-static is used to "bootstrap" pkg.

Styrsven · Mar 12, 2023

It look like it is part of the pkg port

Code:

❯ pkg list pkg|grep pkg-static
/usr/local/man/man8/pkg-static.8.gz
/usr/local/sbin/pkg-static

Alain De Vos · Mar 12, 2023

So i was wrong.

larshenrikoern · Mar 12, 2023

There is also /usr/sbin/pkg

Alain De Vos · Mar 12, 2023

That was the pkg to bootstrap /usr/local/(s)bin/pkg. I.e. one a fresh install where no packages are installed.
pkg-static is probably a good idea if you upgrade "world" . [Because libraries are staticly linked it won't get broken]

larshenrikoern · Mar 12, 2023

B

Alain De Vos said:
That was the pkg to bootstrap /usr/local/(s)bin/pkg. I.e. one a fresh install where no packages are installed.
pkg-static is probably a good idea if you upgrade "world" . [Because libraries are staticly linked it won't get broken]

And it means that this version of pkg is independent of ports as well. Because only linked to base. It can also upgrade the system if needed in emergency