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pkgsrc: The NetBSD Packages Collection

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About pkgsrc

The NetBSD Packages Collection (pkgsrc) is a framework for building third-party software on NetBSD and other UNIX-like systems, currently containing over 8000 packages. It is used to enable freely available software to be configured and built easily on supported platforms.

Latest stable branch: pkgsrc-2010Q2

Latest news

19 April 2010 - pkgsrc-2010Q1 released

The pkgsrc developers are proud to announce the pkgsrc-2010Q1 branch. This new quarterly branch provides support for a number of new packages as well as updated versions of current packages. The infrastructure of pkgsrc itself has also been improved to provide better platform and complier support.

See the release announcement for more information.

31 January 2010 - pkgsrc-2009Q4 released

The pkgsrc developers are proud to announce the pkgsrc-2009Q4 branch. This new quarterly branch provides support for a number of new packages as well as updated versions of current packages. The infrastructure of pkgsrc itself has also been improved to provide better platform and complier support.

See the release announcement for more information.

13 October 2009 - pkgsrc-2009Q3 released

The pkgsrc developers are proud to announce the pkgsrc-2009Q3 branch. This new quarterly branch provides support for a number of new packages as well as updated versions of current packages. The infrastructure of pkgsrc itself has also been improved to provide better platform and complier support.

See the release announcement for more information.

26 July 2009 - pkgsrc-2009Q2 released

The pkgsrc developers are proud to announce the pkgsrc-2009Q2 branch. This new quarterly branch provides support for a number of new packages as well as updated versions of current packages. The infrastructure of pkgsrc itself has also been improved to provide better platform and complier support.

See the release announcement for more information.


The pkgsrc downloads

Available packages

Documentation

Supported platforms

pkgsrc consists of both a Source distribution and a Binary distribution for these operating systems. After retrieving the required source or binaries, you can be up and running with pkgsrc in just minutes!

Table 1. Platforms supported by pkgsrc

Platform Date Support Added
NetBSD Aug 1997
Solaris Mar 1999
Linux Jun 1999
Darwin (Mac OS X) Oct 2001
FreeBSD Nov 2002
OpenBSD Nov 2002
IRIX Dec 2002
BSD/OS Dec 2003
AIX Dec 2003
Interix (Microsoft Windows Services for Unix) Mar 2004
DragonFlyBSD Oct 2004
OSF/1 Nov 2004
HP-UX Apr 2007
QNX Oct 2007

Binary distribution

The binary packages that are produced by pkgsrc can be used without having to compile everything from source. NetBSD already contains the necessary tools for managing binary packages, on other platforms you need to bootstrap pkgsrc to get the package management tools installed. A browsable list of packages, including links to available binary packages, is here.

Binary packages are available on ftp.NetBSD.org and its mirrors in the directory /pub/pkgsrc/packages/ (see the pkgsrc guide for more details). If the tools for managing binary packages do not exist on a platform or are too old, they are provided along the binary packages in an archive called bootstrap.tar.gz, which must be extracted in the / directory. Then you can run /usr/pkg/sbin/pkg_add to install binary packages. See the pkgsrc guide for detailed instructions.

Source distribution

You can download the pkgsrc tarball or checkout the latest sources using AnonCVS: 

# cvs checkout -rpkgsrc-2010Q2 pkgsrc

(for using AnonCVS service, see Tracking NetBSD-current).

After downloading and/or extracting the sources, installing the bootstrap kit should be as simple as: 

# cd pkgsrc/bootstrap
# ./bootstrap

This will use the defaults of /usr/pkg for the prefix and /var/db/pkg for the package database directory. However, these can also be set using command-line parameters (use ./bootstrap --help to see the available options).

Note that when using pkgsrc on a non-NetBSD system, use the bmake command instead of “make” to run the NetBSD make, which is required for correct pkgsrc operation. Simply substitute “bmake” for “make” in pkgsrc documentation.

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