I really think a lot of the user base would benefit from plugins going away and strait forward message of how to install a package in what ever jails are currently available and have that info maintained to be accurate.
I don't agree, I just think Plex is a poor choice of a plugin (since, as I noted above, the work of the "plugin" is duplicated by running just three commands in the jail). But some other packages (I'm thinking particularly of Nextcloud) take quite a bit more work--my
script to install it is over 350 lines long. Taking care of all that with the click of a button is a definite improvement.
Now, the three commands I posted for Plex will get it installed and running, but it's become more popular recently to keep its metadata outside of the jail--that makes it easier to recreate the jail if needed, without losing any data. That's the approach taken in
this guide (both for Plex and a number of other services). But no matter how you install it, the trickiest bit is getting the storage configured with suitable permissions--and you're stuck doing that manually no matter what.
what is happenidng with the updates on freenas so how it will effect current installation of jails. I.e keeping up with current version of freebsd.
iocage should avoid most issues with this. In the past (i.e., under warden, which was the default jail manager in 11.1 and prior), a jail was pretty well locked down to the FreeBSD release under which it was created. Under iocage, it's pretty straightforward to upgrade the jails as you go along.