unitrunker, thanks, but no, neither (unless by "deprecated" you don't mean anything more than simply "has a newer version available"). It happens very frequently, to a lot of packages, and it is always ones that synth itself just rebuilt to a newer version when I did the synth build. Like:
(1) pkg version -v reports that a bunch of ports have updates available, including some/awesomeport, of which version 4.48.21 is installed, but having 4.48.22 available.
(2) synth status {my-top-level-packages} reports that running synth build {my-top-level-packages} would build a bunch of stuff, including building version 4.48.22 of some/awesomeport.
(3) synth build {my-top-level-packages} then does in fact build a bunch of stuff, including version 4.48.22 of some/awesomeport.
(4) Towards the end of the synth build, synth asks me if I want to rebuild the repository. I answer "yes".
(5a) After synth build is complete, nowadays I would run synth rebuild-repository, and everything would work fine thereafter. But...
(5b) Before I had figured out that apparently saying "yes, rebuild the repository" as in step 4 is apparently not the same as saying "rebuild the repository" as in step 5a, I had been simply not doing step 5a at all, leading to:
(6) pkg upgrade -r Synth installs a bunch of things that synth just built, but does not install version 4.48.22 of some/awesomeport. Instead, it just leaves 4.48.21 installed on my system. Remember, synth did build version 4.48.22.
On the other hand, if I had done a synth rebuild-repository in step 5b, synth would have reported that it was removing 4.48.21 from the repository. And the pkg upgrade -r Synth in step 6 would thereafter install 4.48.22 into my system.
After I figured this out, I poked around a little more to try to figure out what the actual difference was, and it's this:
(A) After synth build completes (and, remember, synth has built the new version of awesomeport), the directory /var/synth/live_packages/All contains not just awesomeport-4.48.22.tmz, but also awesomeport-4.48.21.tmz. This is true despite having answered "yes" when synth asked if I wanted it to rebuild the repository.
(B) If you then go straight to pkg upgrade -r Synth, pkg does not upgrade your system with version 4.48.22, and instead just leaves 4.48.21 installed.
(C) But if you instead do a synth rebuild-repository first, synth deletes /var/synth/live_packages/All/awesomeport-4.48.21.tmz, leaving only awesomeport-4.48.22.tmz. Doing a pkg upgrade -r Synth will then cause pkg to install version 4.48.22.
So, the question is essentially: Is this the way it's supposed to be? Answering "yes" to "would you like to rebuild the repository" is not supposed to remove /var/synth/live_packages/All/awesomeport-4.48.21.tmz, even though synth rebuild-repository is supposed to remove it?
I have been assuming that no, it's not supposed to be that way, in which case it seems like there's a bug in synth (i.e. answering "yes" should, but does not, cause that file to be removed), or a bug in pkg (i.e. pkg upgrade -r Synth should just ignore awesomeport-4.48.21.tmz since awesomeport-4.48.22.tmz also exists), or maybe something like a pkg option that I'm unaware of (e.g. I really should be doing pkg upgrade -r Synth --behave-like-bob-expects).
But on the other hand, if this is the way it's supposed to be, then what is the purpose of saying "yes" when synth asks if you want to rebuild the repository? I understand that in some sense the answer is "that will make it rebuild the repository", but if you then also need to later do a synth rebuild-repository in order for the whole process to work, then what's the point of bothering with telling it "yes, I would like to rebuild the repository"?
