# 3 Questions regarding Binary Package Management



## shepper (May 3, 2011)

I have a fresh, minimal install of FreeBSD 8.2 i386 and it looks like the applications I would like to run are in stable as opposed to release (libreoffice, firefox 4).

1.  If I set PACKAGESITE to ****/packages-8-stable/Latest/ do I also need an 8-stable base system?

2.  Browsing the forums I found mention of 'bxpkg' in ports.  Is it also in the binary package respositories - I just found the bxpkg package in the ftp site

3.  Is stable updated daily or is it more like OpenBSD current with periodic updates - I want to avoid getting caught between python updates.


----------



## jb_fvwm2 (May 3, 2011)

1... I'd ncftp to packages-8-stable/www, for instance, to get the latest available, for instance, seamonkey(2) browser... as to Q#3, all are updated as license and hardware resources allow.  Maybe seek other posts with long explanations of which there are many.


----------



## SirDice (May 3, 2011)

1) Usually you don't need to run -stable to use the -stable packages. There can be slight differences between a -STABLE and -RELEASE which could make packages build for -STABLE fail on a -RELEASE but that doesn't happen too often.

2) bxpkg is a GUI frontend to manage packages

3) -STABLE is a continuously moving target. It also has nothing to do with python or any other port. The base OS and the ports system are two separate entities.


----------



## shepper (May 4, 2011)

Thanks to the above posters I built an OpenBox with libreoffice and firefox4.  There were some minor issues with intels cpu speed stepping that where solved by advice elsewhere in the forum.

Looking down the road, I would like to keep the system up-to-date and do not necessarily need a GUI based front end to manage packages.  I was hoping for something simple like openbsd's [cmd=]pkg_add -ui[/cmd]  I understand that [cmd=]portupgrade -PP[/cmd] will accomplish this.  In practice does [cmd=]portupgrade -PP[/cmd] leave one with a working desktop or from a reliability standpoint would it be better to go with *bxpkg*?

It looks like it should be [cmd=]portmaster -PP[/cmd] as pointed out in the next post.


----------



## jb_fvwm2 (May 4, 2011)

Today, I've run multiple instances of 
	
	



```
portmaster -d -B -i
```
 (saving lots of time not updating gcc45, for example, but in the past I've used -PP with that to use packages-only IIRC. You might try that, you can tack on multiple package names to the one command if the syntax is right. (See other posts, search "portmaster"  here and/or its man-page...)


----------

