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pkg - a package manager for FreeBSD

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Table of Contents:

• libpkg
• pkg package format
• Installing packages
• pkg bootstrap
• Additional resources

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libpkg

pkg is built on top of libpkg, a new library to interface with the package registration backends. It abstracts package management details such as registration, remote repositories, package creation, updating, etc.

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pkg package format

The pkg package format is a tar archive that may be raw or compressed using one of the following algorithms: gz, bzip2, zstd, or xz. The default compression algorithm is zstd.

The tar archive itself is composed of two types of elements:

• the special files at the beginning of the archive, starting with a "+"
• the data.

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Installing packages

pkg can install a package archive from the local disk, remote HTTP server or remote SSH server.

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Pkg bootstrap

All supported versions of FreeBSD now contain /usr/sbin/pkg a.k.a pkg(7). This is a small placeholder that has just the minimum functionality required to install the real pkg(8).

To use, simply run any pkg(8) command line. pkg(7) will intercept the command, and if you confirm that is your intention, download the pkg(8) tarball, install pkg(8) from it, bootstrap the local package database and then proceed to run the command you originally requested.

More recent versions of pkg(7) understand pkg -N as a test to see if pkg(8) is installed without triggering the installation, and conversely, pkg bootstrap[-f] to install pkg(8) (or force it to be reinstalled) without performing any other actions.

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Additional resources

• The Git repository of pkg is hosted on GitHub

To contact us, you can find us in the #pkg channel on Libera Chat IRC Network.

If you hit a bug when using pkg, you can always submit an issue in the pkg issue tracker.