This is from vermaden, who's site has a lot of informative very good FreeBSD information.

I remember in the 8x days, there was talk of moving parts or all of base installable via pkg. That server had a heat death and I have yet to replace it, so I have been out of the FreeBSD world for a while. At the time it was just being proposed.

I wonder if that has been completed or is this a first step to doing that ?