Pkgsrc

Last updated
pkgsrc
Developer(s) Alistair Crooks, Hubert Feyrer and Johnny C. Lam [1]
Initial releaseJanuary 4, 1998;27 years ago (1998-01-04)
Stable release
2025Q3 [2] / 25 September 2025;6 days ago (25 September 2025)
Repository
Written in C, Unix shell
Operating system Unix-like
Type Package management system
License BSD License
Website www.pkgsrc.org

pkgsrc (package source) is a package management system for Unix-like operating systems. It was forked from the FreeBSD ports collection in 1997 as the primary package management system for NetBSD. Since then it has evolved independently; in 1999, support for Solaris was added, followed by support for other operating systems. [3]

Contents

As of September 2025, pkgsrc currently contains over 29,000 packages [4] and includes most popular open-source software. It is the native package manager on NetBSD, SmartOS and MINIX 3, and is portable across 23 different operating systems, including AIX, various BSD derivatives, HP-UX, IRIX, Linux, [5] macOS, [6] Solaris, and QNX. [7]

There are multiple ways to install programs using pkgsrc. The pkgsrc bootstrap contains a traditional ports collection that utilizes a series of makefiles to compile software from source. Another method is to install pre-built binary packages via the pkg_add and pkg_delete tools. A high-level utility named pkgin also exists, and is designed to automate the installation, removal, and update of binary packages in a manner similar to Debian's Advanced Packaging Tool. [8]

Several vendors, including MNX.io, provide binary packages for popular operating systems, including macOS and Linux. [6] [5]

Supported platforms

PlatformDate added
NetBSD October 1997
Solaris March 1999
Linux June 1999
Darwin and macOS October 2001
FreeBSD November 2002
OpenBSD November 2002
IRIX December 2002
BSD/OS December 2003
AIX December 2003
Interix (for Windows NT)March 2004
DragonFly BSD October 2004
OSF/1 November 2004
HP-UX April 2007
QNX October 2007
Haiku January 2010
MINIX 3 August 2010
MirBSD January 2011
illumos and SmartOS February 2011
Cygwin May 2013
GNU/kFreeBSD July 2013
Bitrig June 2015

History

On October 3, 1997, NetBSD developers Alistair Crooks and Hubert Feyrer created pkgsrc [1] based on the FreeBSD ports system and intended to support the NetBSD packages collection. It was officially released as part of NetBSD 1.3 [9] on January 4, 1998. DragonFly BSD used pkgsrc as its official package system from version 1.4 in 2006, to 3.4 in 2013. [10] [3]

On 2017-09-12, a commit message policy that accommodates DVCS was established by the project. [11]

Packages

The NetBSD Foundation provides official, pre-built binary packages for multiple combinations of NetBSD and pkgsrc releases, and occasionally for certain other operating systems as well. [12]

As of 2018, several vendors provide pre-built binary packages for several platforms:

References

  1. 1 2 "10 years of pkgsrc - pkgsrc and the concepts of package management 1997-2007 (part 1)". www.netbsd.org. The NetBSD Foundation. Retrieved 14 October 2010.
  2. ↑ Benny Siegert (25 September 2025). "pkgsrc-2025Q3 released" . Retrieved 28 September 2025.
  3. 1 2 David Chisnall (2006-10-06). "NetBSD: Not Just for Toasters". InformIT . Prentice Hall Professional . Retrieved 2019-07-25.
  4. ↑ Siegert, Benn (25 September 2025). "pkgsrc-2025Q3 released" (Mailing list). Retrieved 1 October 2025.
  5. 1 2 3 "Joyent Packages Documentation - Install On Linux". Joyent . Retrieved 2018-10-10.
  6. 1 2 3 4 "Joyent Packages Documentation - Install On macOS". Joyent. Archived from the original on 2018-10-06. Retrieved 2018-10-10.
  7. ↑ Perkin, Jonathan (2018-10-05). "Announcing the pkgsrc-2018Q3 release". NetBSD . Retrieved 2018-10-10.
  8. ↑ "pkgin, a binary package manager for pkgsrc".
  9. ↑ "Information about NetBSD 1.3".
  10. ↑ Dillon, Matthew (2005-08-31). "PKGSRC will be officially supported as of the next release". DragonFly users mailing list.
  11. ↑ Thomas Klausner (2017-09-12). "pkgsrc Commit Message Policy". pkgsrc-users@ (Mailing list). NetBSD . Retrieved 2019-05-09.
  12. ↑ "Index of pub/PKGSRC/Packages/".
  13. 1 2 "Joyent's packages, available for SmartOS/illumos, Linux, and OSX". Archived from the original on 2014-07-15. Retrieved 2018-10-11.
  14. ↑ "Index of /Packages/".
  15. 1 2 "Re: Pkgsrc binary packages now available for scientific computing". pkgsrc-users (Mailing list). NetBSD. 2017-08-01. Retrieved 2018-10-13.
  16. ↑ "mirror1.hpc.uwm.edu/pkgsrc/" . Retrieved 2018-10-11.
  17. ↑ "Software Management". University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, High Performance Computing dept. Retrieved 2018-10-11.
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