# Pkg quarterly to Latest



## Terpentijn (Sep 7, 2019)

I have the normal FreeBSD.conf for pkg installed on FreeBSD-RELEASE

```
FreeBSD: {
url: "pkg+http://pkg.FreeBSD.org/${ABI}/quarterly",
mirror_type: "srv",
signature_type: "fingerprints",
fingerprints: "/usr/share/keys/pkg",
enabled: yes
}
```

To get newer pkgs, I have to change ‘quarterly’ to ‘latest’ and update/upgrade the pkgs. My question is, is this really safe to do on a RELEASE version of FreeBSD? Are these pkgs not for FreeBSD-Stable? I’d rather ask, before ruining my system.

Is it also safe to change pkg.FreeBSDS.org to pkg.eu.FreeBSD.org to get higher download speeds? I live in Czechia.

Thanks for any advice.


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## Phishfry (Sep 7, 2019)

Terpentijn said:


> is this really safe to do on a RELEASE version of FreeBSD? Are these pkgs not for FreeBSD-Stable?


Yes it is safe to use on -RELEASE. The 'latest' packages provide faster updates to packages that may have vulnerabilities.
On the other hand there is some churn because things are changing faster.
You will have to face that same churn when updating 'quaterly' but on a larger scale.
So 'latest' has an occasional package breakage, whereas 'quarterly' can really go bad with so many packages changing.
Face the problem a little at a time with 'latest' or or all at once with 'quarterly'.


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## Terpentijn (Sep 7, 2019)

OK. I just created a new boot environment just to be on the safe side and upgraded my pkgs to the latest versions. 105 of them. We’ll see what happens.


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## T-Daemon (Sep 7, 2019)

Terpentijn said:


> I have the normal FreeBSD.conf for pkg installed on FreeBSD-RELEASE
> ....
> To get newer pkgs, I have to change ‘quarterly’ to ‘latest’


It is suggested to copy   /etc/pkg/FreeBSD.conf to /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/FreeBSD.conf and modify the repository there.


Terpentijn said:


> is this really safe to do on a RELEASE version of FreeBSD? Are these pkgs not for FreeBSD-Stable?


latest does not refer to a specific branch of FreeBSD, it means packages are based on ports head, head refers to the current ports tree. (Note - the quarterly ports are in the branches directory)

Here are informations on what the quarterly ports branch is.



Terpentijn said:


> Is it also safe to change pkg.FreeBSDS.org to pkg.eu.FreeBSD.org to get higher download speeds? I live in Czechia.


There is no pkg.eu.FreeBSD.org repository. The closest repository mirror is choosen by geo-dns.


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## Terpentijn (Sep 7, 2019)

T-Daemon said:


> It is suggested to copy   /etc/pkg/FreeBSD.conf to /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/FreeBSD.conf and modify the repository there.
> 
> latest does not refer to a specific branch of FreeBSD, it means packages are based on ports head, head refers to the current ports tree. (Note - the quarterly ports are in the branches directory)
> 
> ...


Geo-dns. OK, it does seem to do a bad job then. Downloading pkgs is extremely slow, compared to the DL speed I got on Linux repos on this same machine. It might be just a fbsd issue. I can live with it.


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