Followup on packaging base with pkg(8)

Dear FreeBSD community:

Early this year, it was announced [1] that FreeBSD 11.0-RELEASE would
ship not only with the ability to package the base system with pkg(8),
but the intent to use pkg(8) as the primary binary upgrade mechanism for
the base system.

Despite the schedule adjustment for 11.0-RELEASE to allow additional
time to resolve several issues prior to the merge to head, too many
issues remained.  Following the merge to head, many more issues were
discovered, some resolved, but many without a clear, non-disruptive
solution.

Given the state of this highly-disruptive change to the base system, we
need to take the best interest of the FreeBSD community into primary
consideration, as a whole.

We have arrived at the difficult decision to treat packaged base as
a "beta" feature for 11.0-RELEASE, and continue with freebsd-update(8)
as the primary binary upgrade mechanism for this release.

Development on this change will continue in head and stable/11 (when it
is branched), however, with the target goal of transitioning to pkg(8)
for the base system for 11.1-RELEASE.

We fully intend to do this in a way that does not constitute a POLA
violation, especially on an established -STABLE branch.  The details on
how we will attempt this transition are still to be determined, however
all technical, solvable details.  But we will ensure as best as we can
to avoid violating POLA for the transition while the remaining issues
are resolved.

At this point, the risks far outweigh the benefits, especially taking
into consideration some of the more recent fallout of several changes.

Thank you to everyone who supported this effort, and we hope you will
continue to support and test the forward development of packaging the
base system with pkg(8).

Thank you.

[1] https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-pkgbase/2016-January/000000.html

Glen
On behalf of:	re_at_