• pkg

pkg

The package management tool for FreeBSD.

Essential manual pages:

• pkg(7) – integral to FreeBSD, primarily for bootstrapping

• pkg(8) – best known, with features available as a result of bootstrapping.

In FreshPorts:

• https://www.freshports.org/ports-mgmt/pkg/

In GitHub:

• https://github.com/freebsd/pkg

• issues and pull requests (PRs) that are complementary to bug reports (BRs also known as PRs) in Bugzilla.

Hints

pkg-alias(8) is amongst the valuable pages that are sometimes overlooked.

ports-mgmt/pkg-provides can be plugged in to pkg. An example:

% pkg provides bin/mkntfs$
Name    : fusefs-ntfs-2017.3.23
Desc    : Mount NTFS partitions (read/write) and disk images
Repo    : FreeBSD
Filename: usr/local/sbin/mkntfs
% 

– for more examples, see pkg-provides(8).

BRs can be found and created through FreshPorts.

History

pkg_info, pkg_create and pkg_add were used for registration of local packages and provision of remote packages.

pkgng provided a new generation (ng) of commands.

pkgng became known as pkg.