Unwanted summer gift from pkg

[fatty.merc...@aceecat.org]

For some reason pkg wants to turn my nice text only system into
another mouse driven confusion machine:

[root@lenovotc ~]# pkg upgrade -g '*'
Updating FreeBSD repository catalogue...
FreeBSD repository is up to date.
Updating FreeBSD-kmods repository catalogue...
FreeBSD-kmods repository is up to date.
All repositories are up to date.
The following 134 package(s) will be affected (of 0 checked):

New packages to be INSTALLED:
abseil: 20250127.1_1 [FreeBSD]
avahi-app: 0.8_6 [FreeBSD]
avro-c: 1.12.1 [FreeBSD]
aws-c-auth: 0.10.3 [FreeBSD]
aws-c-cal: 0.9.14 [FreeBSD]
aws-c-common: 0.14.1,1 [FreeBSD]
aws-c-compression: 0.3.2 [FreeBSD]
aws-c-event-stream: 0.7.1,1 [FreeBSD]
aws-c-http: 0.11.0 [FreeBSD]
aws-c-io: 0.27.2 [FreeBSD]
aws-c-mqtt: 0.16.0 [FreeBSD]
aws-c-s3: 0.12.7 [FreeBSD]
aws-c-sdkutils: 0.2.7 [FreeBSD]
aws-checksums: 0.2.10,1 [FreeBSD]
aws-crt-cpp: 0.41.0 [FreeBSD]
aws-sdk-cpp: 1.11.825 [FreeBSD]
consolekit2: 2.0.0_1 [FreeBSD]
dbus: 1.16.2_4,1 [FreeBSD]
dbus-glib: 0.114 [FreeBSD]
duktape-lib: 2.7.0_1 [FreeBSD]
fftw3: 3.3.10_5 [FreeBSD]
fftw3-float: 3.3.10_5 [FreeBSD]
flac: 1.5.0,1 [FreeBSD]
gnome_subr: 1.0 [FreeBSD]
hwdata: 0.409,1 [FreeBSD]
lame: 3.100_5 [FreeBSD]
libICE: 1.1.2,1 [FreeBSD]
libSM: 1.2.6,1 [FreeBSD]
libX11: 1.8.13_1,1 [FreeBSD]
libXau: 1.0.12 [FreeBSD]
libXdmcp: 1.1.5 [FreeBSD]
libXext: 1.3.7,1 [FreeBSD]
libXfixes: 6.0.1 [FreeBSD]
libXi: 1.8.3,1 [FreeBSD]
libXtst: 1.2.5 [FreeBSD]
libdaemon: 0.14_1 [FreeBSD]
libdrm: 2.4.133,1 [FreeBSD]
libevdev: 1.13.2 [FreeBSD]
libltdl: 2.5.4 [FreeBSD]
libogg: 1.3.6,4 [FreeBSD]
libpciaccess: 0.19 [FreeBSD]
libsndfile: 1.2.2.20251216 [FreeBSD]
libsoxr: 0.1.3_3 [FreeBSD]
libudev-devd: 0.6.0 [FreeBSD]
libvorbis: 1.3.7_2,3 [FreeBSD]
libxcb: 1.17.0 [FreeBSD]
libxslt: 1.1.45 [FreeBSD]
lmdb0: 0.9.35 [FreeBSD]
mpg123: 1.33.6 [FreeBSD]
opus: 1.6.1 [FreeBSD]
orc: 0.4.42 [FreeBSD]
polkit: 127 [FreeBSD]
pulseaudio: 17.0_4 [FreeBSD]
py312-packaging: 26.2 [FreeBSD]
python312: 3.12.13_3 [FreeBSD]
s2n-tls: 1.7.5,1 [FreeBSD]
snappy: 1.2.2 [FreeBSD]
speexdsp: 1.2.1 [FreeBSD]
unixODBC: 2.3.12_2 [FreeBSD]
webrtc-audio-processing: 1.3_1 [FreeBSD]
xorgproto: 2025.1 [FreeBSD]

Installed packages to be UPGRADED:
bash: 5.3.9 -> 5.3.15 [FreeBSD]
curl: 8.20.0 -> 8.21.0 [FreeBSD]
cyrus-sasl: 2.1.28_5 -> 2.1.28_6 [FreeBSD]
diffstat: 1.68 -> 1.69 [FreeBSD]
duckdb: 1.5.0 -> 1.5.4 [FreeBSD]
gcc14: 14.2.0_4 -> 14.2.0_6 [FreeBSD]
gdb: 15.1_4 -> 15.1_5 [FreeBSD]
getopt: 2.41.3 -> 2.42.2 [FreeBSD]
gettext-runtime: 1.0 -> 1.0_1 [FreeBSD]
git: 2.53.0 -> 2.54.0 [FreeBSD]
git-absorb: 0.9.0_1 -> 0.9.0_3 [FreeBSD]
git-lfs: 3.6.1_18 -> 3.6.1_19 [FreeBSD]
git-svn: 2.53.0 -> 2.54.0 [FreeBSD]
glib: 2.84.4,2 -> 2.86.4,2 [FreeBSD]
gnupg: 2.4.9 -> 2.5.20_1 [FreeBSD]
gpgme: 2.0.1 -> 2.1.2 [FreeBSD]
gsed: 4.9 -> 4.10 [FreeBSD]
guile-aclocal: 3.0.10 -> 3.0.11 [FreeBSD]
guile3: 3.0.10 -> 3.0.11 [FreeBSD]
hs-pandoc: 3.9.0.2 -> 3.10 [FreeBSD]
hs-pandoc-crossref: 0.3.23 -> 0.3.24 [FreeBSD]
jansson: 2.15.0 -> 2.15.1_1 [FreeBSD]
jasper: 4.2.8 -> 4.2.9 [FreeBSD]
jq: 1.8.1 -> 1.8.2 [FreeBSD]
lerc: 4.0.0 -> 4.1.0 [FreeBSD]
libedit: 3.1.20251016_1,1 -> 3.1.20260512,1 [FreeBSD]
libevent: 2.1.12 -> 2.1.13 [FreeBSD]
libffi: 3.5.1 -> 3.6.0 [FreeBSD]
libgcrypt: 1.12.0_1 -> 1.12.2 [FreeBSD]
libgpg-error: 1.59 -> 1.61 [FreeBSD]
libksba: 1.6.7 -> 1.8.0 [FreeBSD]
libnghttp2: 1.68.1 -> 1.69.0 [FreeBSD]
libnghttp3: 1.15.0 -> 1.17.0 [FreeBSD]
libngtcp2: 1.22.1 -> 1.24.0 [FreeBSD]
libpsl: 0.21.5_2 -> 0.22.0 [FreeBSD]
libssh2: 1.11.1,3 -> 1.11.1_1,3 [FreeBSD]
libuv: 1.52.0 -> 1.52.1 [FreeBSD]
libxml2: 2.15.2 -> 2.15.3 [FreeBSD]
llhttp: 9.3.1 -> 9.4.2 [FreeBSD]
lmdb: 0.9.35,1 -> 1.0.0,1 [FreeBSD]
luajit: 2.1.0.20260304 -> 2.1.0.20260629 [FreeBSD]
mpc: 1.4.0 -> 1.4.1 [FreeBSD]
mutt: 2.3.2 -> 2.4.1_1 [FreeBSD]
nbytes: 0.1.3 -> 0.1.4 [FreeBSD]
p5-Clone: 0.47 -> 0.50 [FreeBSD]
p5-IO-Socket-SSL: 2.098 -> 2.099 [FreeBSD]
p5-IPC-Run: 20231003.0 -> 20260402.0 [FreeBSD]
p5-Locale-libintl: 1.35 -> 1.37 [FreeBSD]
pinentry: 1.3.2_1 -> 1.3.3 [FreeBSD]
pinentry-curses: 1.3.2 -> 1.3.3 [FreeBSD]
pkgconf: 2.4.3,1 -> 2.4.3_1,1 [FreeBSD]
png: 1.6.57 -> 1.6.58 [FreeBSD]
py311-packaging: 26.0 -> 26.2 [FreeBSD]
racket-minimal: 9.0 -> 9.2 [FreeBSD]
ripgrep: 15.1.0_4 -> 15.1.0_6 [FreeBSD]
rsync: 3.4.4 -> 3.4.4_1 [FreeBSD]
scryer-prolog: 0.10.0_4 -> 0.10.0_6 [FreeBSD]
simdjson: 4.5.0 -> 4.6.4 [FreeBSD]
spiped: 1.6.4 -> 1.6.4_1 [FreeBSD]
sqlite3: 3.50.4_2,1 -> 3.53.3,1 [FreeBSD]
tcl86: 8.6.17 -> 8.6.18_1 [FreeBSD]
texinfo: 7.2_6,1 -> 7.3_1,1 [FreeBSD]
tmux: 3.6a -> 3.7b [FreeBSD]
tree: 2.2.1 -> 2.3.2 [FreeBSD]
tree-sitter: 0.26.7 -> 0.26.10 [FreeBSD]
typst: 0.14.2_1 -> 0.15.0 [FreeBSD]
xxd: 9.2.0277 -> 9.2.0738 [FreeBSD]
zstd: 1.5.7_1 -> 1.5.7_2 [FreeBSD]

Installed packages to be REINSTALLED:
gettext-tools-1.0 [FreeBSD] (direct dependency changed: python312)
git-filter-repo-2.47.0 [FreeBSD] (direct dependency changed: python312)
mc-4.8.32 [FreeBSD] (direct dependency changed: python312)
pssh-2.3.6 [FreeBSD] (direct dependency changed: python312)
python3-3_4 [FreeBSD] (direct dependency changed: python312)

Number of packages to be installed: 61
Number of packages to be upgraded: 68
Number of packages to be reinstalled: 5

The process will require 964 MiB more space.
503 MiB to be downloaded.

Proceed with this action? [y/N]: n
[root@lenovotc ~]#

What is going on? Is it one of the installed packages acquiring
a new dependency? Can you tell which one?

Or teach me to fish: how can I figure this out myself with pkg?
But without actually doing the upgrade, and that's a hard requirement.

--
Ian

[John Levine]

It appears that <fatty.merc...@aceecat.org> said:
>For some reason pkg wants to turn my nice text only system into
>another mouse driven confusion machine:
>
>[root@lenovotc ~]# pkg upgrade -g '*'

Why aren't you doing a plain "pkg upgrade"?

That -g * is expanding to packages you don't already have installed and don't want.

R's,
John

[fatty.merc...@aceecat.org]

On Thu, Jul 30, 2026 at 10:25:13PM -0400, John Levine wrote:

> >[root@lenovotc ~]# pkg upgrade -g '*'

> Why aren't you doing a plain "pkg upgrade"?

> That -g * is expanding to packages you don't already have installed
> and don't want.

That wasn't my experience until now. Has this aspect of pkg changed
recently? IME just "pkg upgrade" will do nothing, even if updates are
available, and the command line I in fact tried will upgrade all
installed packages and no more, plus dependencies of course.

--
Ian

[fatty.merc...@aceecat.org]

On Thu, Jul 30, 2026 at 07:36:27PM -0700, fatty.merc...@aceecat.org wrote:

> > Why aren't you doing a plain "pkg upgrade"?

> > That -g * is expanding to packages you don't already have installed
> > and don't want.

> That wasn't my experience until now. Has this aspect of pkg changed
> recently? IME just "pkg upgrade" will do nothing, even if updates are
> available, and the command line I in fact tried will upgrade all
> installed packages and no more, plus dependencies of course.

I thought I'd be a good boy and try the obvious thing myself, running
the bare "pkg upgrade" as you suggested. To my shock, I get exactly
the same output, offering-but-you-cannot-refuse all that X11 stuff.

Something is wrong. Perhaps related to pkgbase? But I'm on FreeBSD 14.

--
Ian

[John Levine]

It appears that <fatty.merc...@aceecat.org> said:

>On Thu, Jul 30, 2026 at 07:36:27PM -0700, fatty.merc...@aceecat.org wrote:
>

>> > Why aren't you doing a plain "pkg upgrade"? ...

>Something is wrong. Perhaps related to pkgbase? But I'm on FreeBSD 14.

Something strange is going on. Perhaps send us the results of "pkg info"
so we can see what you have installed now.

I also have a 14.4 machine with no X stuff and pkg upgrade works fine for me.

R's,
John

[Gian Piero Carrubba]

* [Thu, Jul 30, 2026 at 07:01:42PM -0700] fatty.merc...@aceecat.org:

>What is going on? Is it one of the installed packages acquiring
>a new dependency? Can you tell which one?
>
>Or teach me to fish: how can I figure this out myself with pkg?
>But without actually doing the upgrade, and that's a hard requirement.

I don't know of a finished solution, but with some shell-fu you can sort
it out by using the '%rn' and/or '%dn' parameters with `pkg rquery` (man
pkg-rquery for details).

[fatty.merc...@aceecat.org]

On Fri, Jul 31, 2026 at 01:32:19PM +0200, Gian Piero Carrubba wrote:

> > Or teach me to fish: how can I figure this out myself with pkg?
> > But without actually doing the upgrade, and that's a hard
> > requirement.

> I don't know of a finished solution, but with some shell-fu you can
> sort it out by using the '%rn' and/or '%dn' parameters with `pkg
> rquery` (man pkg-rquery for details).

Thank you. A good exercise for me to learn more about pkg, which I
need to do.

Meanwhile, the answer to my original problem will be in the other
subthread.

--
Ian

[fatty.merc...@aceecat.org]

In the end it was nothing untoward, just a package newly embarnacled
with dependencies, just as I thought in the beginning. That package
is duckdb. If needed I'll build it from source.

Perhaps the more interesting point for this thread is that these 2
commands seem to in fact be equivalent:

- pkg upgrade

- pkg upgrade -g '*'

Reading the manpage I see how I got the idea for the latter, as it
explicitly says nothing new will be installed, even with -g, unless
forced by dependencies; but it never seems to specify what should
happen with the former. Expert comments?

--
Ian

[Dan Mahoney (Ports)]

> On Jul 31, 2026, at 11:11 AM, fatty.merc...@aceecat.org wrote:
>
> In the end it was nothing untoward, just a package newly embarnacled
> with dependencies, just as I thought in the beginning. That package
> is duckdb. If needed I'll build it from source.

Good catch!

pkg really needs a why-depends on upgrades/installs like this that lets it print the tree.

-Dan

[Chris Hill]

On Fri, 31 Jul 2026, fatty.merc...@aceecat.org wrote:

> In the end it was nothing untoward, just a package newly embarnacled

> with dependencies, ... [snip]

Embarnacled! Awesome word. Thank you for that.

--
Chris Hill ch...@monochrome.org

[Mathias M.]

On Thu, Jul 30, 2026 at 07:01:42PM -0700, fatty.merc...@aceecat.org wrote:
>
> What is going on? Is it one of the installed packages acquiring
> a new dependency? Can you tell which one?
>
> Or teach me to fish: how can I figure this out myself with pkg?
> But without actually doing the upgrade, and that's a hard requirement.
>
> --
> Ian
>

pkg query '%ro' jansson

multimedia/handbrake
ports-mgmt/packagekit
www/angie-module-auth-jwt
www/angie-module-jwt
www/apache24
www/mod_auth_openidc
games/diaspora
net/asterisk22
net/asterisk20
devel/avro-c
sysutils/bareos-server
sysutils/bareos23-server
sysutils/bareos24-server
sysutils/bareos-client
sysutils/bareos23-client
sysutils/bareos24-client
sysutils/bareos-traymonitor
sysutils/bareos23-traymonitor
sysutils/bareos23-traymonitor
sysutils/bareos24-traymonitor
audio/cardinal
security/certmonger
devel/cjose
graphics/cptutils
net-p2p/cpuminer
mail/cyrus-imapd310
mail/cyrus-imapd312
mail/cyrus-imapd312
mail/cyrus-imapd38
mail/cyrus-imapd310
mail/cyrus-imapd36
mail/cyrus-imapd36
mail/cyrus-imapd32
mail/cyrus-imapd30
mail/cyrus-imapd38
mail/cyrus-imapd34
mail/cyrus-imapd34
net-p2p/datum_gateway
audio/deadbeef
dns/dnsdbq
dns/dnsdbflex
databases/duckdb
net/dpdk
net/dpdk-20.11
games/ezquake
net/fort
net/freeipa-client
net/gnunet
devel/hoel
misc/iio-oscilloscope
irc/ircd-hybrid
www/janus
net/jose
textproc/jshon
multimedia/lebiniou
net/libcapn
audio/libcoverart
www/libjwt3
www/libjwt
devel/libsearpc
devel/libserdes
www/logswan
net/mtr
net/mtr
net-mgmt/netxms
www/nghttp2
x11/nvidia-settings
multimedia/obs-studio
math/octave-forge-rtree
mail/openarc
security/passivedns
editors/rehex
net/samba420
net/samba419
net/samba422
net/samba423
net/samba416
math/scipoptsuite
net-mgmt/seafile-gui
net-mgmt/seafile-server
net-mgmt/seafile-client
security/sssd2
security/suricata
security/tang
net-im/telegram-cli
www/trafficserver
irc/unreal
www/ulfius
devel/universal-ctags
multimedia/ustreamer
net/wayvnc
security/yara
devel/yder



Now I've never heard of 'jansson'. Apparently it's a C library for
handling JSON data. As to why that has so many dependencies, I have no
clue.

Regards,
Mathias
--
Parallel lines never meet, unless you bend one or both of them.

[ax disroo]

> On Jul 31, 2026, at 10:57, Mathias M. wrote:

Hi Mathias,

> On Thu, Jul 30, 2026 at 07:01:42PM -0700, fatty.merchandise677@ wrote:
…

>> Is it one of the installed packages acquiring
>> a new dependency? Can you tell which one?
>>
>> Or teach me to fish: how can I figure this out myself with pkg?

…
> pkg query '%ro' jansson

That “r” is to list “reverse dependencies” (use “d” to list dependencies of a package; see “pkg-query(8)” manual page);

> multimedia/handbrake
> ports-mgmt/packagekit
> www/angie-module-auth-jwt
> www/angie-module-jwt
> www/apache24

… (truncated long list)

> Now I've never heard of 'jansson'. Apparently it's a C library for
> handling JSON data. As to why that has so many dependencies, I have no
> clue.

…

Packages of that long list are dependent on “jansson”, not the other way around.

- ax61