Contact: Isaac Freund <ifreund@freebsdfoundation.org>

The FreeBSD installer now supports installing a pkgbase system.

Recent FreeBSD 15.0 snapshots have a new dialog in the installer that allows the user to fetch and install packages from pkg.freebsd.org instead of using the legacy distribution sets.

There is also support in the build system to build FreeBSD installation media with offline pkgbase packages included, enabling fully offline installation of a pkgbase system. These offline pkgbase packages are not yet included in 15.0 snapshot release installation however, as including both the offline legacy distribution sets and pkgbase packages would significantly increase the size of the installation media. There is however a -DPKGBASE build-time switch ready to be flipped by the FreeBSD Release Engineering team, hopefully in the near future.

Sponsor: The FreeBSD Foundation