> First, you're responding to an almost 10 year old thread, just saying
Please be nice. I already pointed out my awareness.
>> the reason it may not have worked cleanly
>the cause is a completely different one
Apparently you missed the paragraph where I described who my post was aimed to benefit.
There is no uninstaller for FreeBSD components such as doc, games, src, ports, and lib32. By default, freebsd-update.conf has Components src world kernel. Within world are optional installs (doc, games, lib32) and freebsd-update does filesystem checks to determine whether it should update them. Without touching freebsd-update.conf at all, uninstalling the no-longer-desired components as I described does exactly what the OP and other search visitors likely want: removes the components and prevents freebsd-update from updating them.
FreeBSD users who have FreeBSD installed for them (think: cloud provider) or don't wish to re-install to get rid of components may well search for how to remove those components and land on this thread. My post was for them.