Synth can't find packagesite.pkg

[ericx]

I thot I would try out Synth; so I installed it, and now most things fail with variations of:

# pkg update -f
Updating FreeBSD repository catalogue...
Fetching meta.conf: 100%    163 B   0.2kB/s    00:01    
Fetching packagesite.pkg: 100%    6 MiB   6.8MB/s    00:01    
Processing entries: 100%
The provides database is up-to-date.
FreeBSD repository update completed. 33131 packages processed.
Updating Synth repository catalogue...
pkg: file:///var/synth/live_packages/meta.txz: No such file or directory
repository Synth has no meta file, using default settings
pkg: file:///var/synth/live_packages/packagesite.pkg: No such file or directory
pkg: file:///var/synth/live_packages/packagesite.txz: No such file or directory
Unable to update repository Synth
Error updating repositories!
[Exit 1 ]

On the face of it, this looks like a chicken/egg question? In theory I'm downloading the latest packagesite.pkg using pkg; but then it refuses to copy the file into /var/synth/live_packages because the file doesn't already exist?

How do I tee this off?

 

[zirias@]

I don't know details about how synth works (using poudriere only), but still have to ask: Did you ever actually build your own repository using synth?

 

[ericx]

No. that appears to be the obvious thing and synth upgrade-system appears to be running happily.
I guess I don't understand the basic function? Am I replacing the FreeBSD pkg repository with my own?
I was following a blog and it was recommended to use ccache but after installing Synth, pkg install ccache was failing with the Synth index error above.

 

[zirias@]

Am I replacing the FreeBSD pkg repository with my own?

I'm pretty sure the answer is yes, at least this would make sense. Synth always offered to also use official packages (where possible) for creating your own local repository ... long before poudriere could do a similar thing. It just makes sense to exclusively use your own repository for pkg then. But you can still configure pkg the way you want (like e.g. switch back to using official FreeBSD repos).