You may be unaware of the numerous freebsd-update bugs that will never be fixed.

With regard to pkgbase,

> … Graham Perrin … not a finished mechanism. Very clearly not. (-:

My experience with pkgbase is clearly very different from your perspective. <https://lobste.rs/s/ikhfqq/pkgbase_removes_freebsd_base_syst...>:

"… I should describe the pkgbase caboodle as ninety-eight percent production-ready. The official packages for FreeBSD-RELEASE have always been _one hundred percent_ production quality. Very few aspects of pkgbase are experimental."