Solved what is a "candidate"?

[circus78]

Hi, I am using FreeBSD 13.0-RELEASE; sometimes I use pkg upgrade and I get this:

# pkg upgrade
Updating FreeBSD repository catalogue...
FreeBSD repository is up to date.
All repositories are up to date.
Checking for upgrades (3 candidates): 100%
Processing candidates (3 candidates): 100%
The following 1 package(s) will be affected (of 0 checked):

Installed packages to be UPGRADED:
        binutils: 2.33.1_4,1 -> 2.33.1_5,1

Number of packages to be upgraded: 1

18 MiB to be downloaded.

Proceed with this action? [y/N]:

So it seems there are 3 package to upgrade, while only one is actually pending.
What is exactly a candidate in that case?
Thank you!

 

[SirDice]

     pkg upgrade compares the versions of all or specific packages installed
     on the system to what is available in the configured package
     repositories.  Any out of date packages are added to a work list for
     processing.  The difference to pkg-install(8) is that pkg upgrade tries
     to upgrade dependencies of packages matched as well while pkg-install(8)
     is more conservative during dependencies upgrade.  Moreover, pkg upgrade
     will not install new packages, except as required to fulfil dependencies
     of the packages listed on the command line.  A caller should ensure that
     patterns specified as arguments have installed candidates for matching.
     If the -f (force) flag is given, all installed packages are added to the
     work list.

     The package metadata downloaded from the repositories is then examined
     for each of the packages in the work list, and any missing dependencies
     are added to the work list as install jobs.  Such implicitly added
     packages are flagged as candidates for autoremoval.  See
     pkg-autoremove(8) for details.

pkg-upgrade(8)