In the past, some packages have caused more package failures than others, and we'd like to reduce this in the future. For this reason, pkgsrc-pmc marks some packages with POLICY_UPDATE_LIMITED. The possible values currently are: abi for packages where ABI/API changes often broke the packages depending on them bootstrap for packages that are used during the pkgsrc bootstrap pkglint will warn when committing updates to these packages. Before committing non-micro version updates to packages marked with POLICY_UPDATE_LIMITED=abi, a limited bulk build of meta-pkgs/bulk-test-${PACKAGE} needs to be run and the result posted to the tech-pkg mailing list, highlighting what packages would stop building (if any). Depending on the result, pkgsrc-pmc then decides: go ahead with the update wait for packages X, Y, Z to be fixed (upstream or locally) with the updated version, which is put in wip in the meantime In the second case, all pkgsrc developers are encouraged to work on fixing this - it is not only the updater's task to fix them. The decision to wait for packages can be revisited. When updating packages used in the bootstrap, i.e. marked with POLICY_UPDATE_LIMITED=bootstrap, test the bootstrap process and preferably some basic packages and send the patch to the tech-pkg mailing list so it can be tested on other platforms as well. Give at least two weeks for feedback and testing by others.