# 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 :

```
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.


----------

