Pkgsrc

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]

pkgsrc
Developer(s)	Alistair Crooks, Hubert Feyrer and Johnny C. Lam[1]
Initial release	January 4, 1998; 27 years ago (1998-01-04)
Stable release	2025Q1[2] / 31 March 2025; 3 months ago (31 March 2025)
Repository	github.com/NetBSD/pkgsrc.git
Written in	C, Unix shell
Operating system	Unix-like
Type	Package management system
License	BSD License
Website	www.pkgsrc.org

pkgsrc currently contains over 22,000 packages 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,^[4] macOS,^[5] Solaris, and QNX.^[6]

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.^[7]

Several vendors, including MNX.io, provide binary packages for popular operating systems, including macOS and Linux.^[5][4]

Supported platforms

Platform	Date 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^[8] on January 4, 1998. DragonFly BSD used pkgsrc as its official package system from version 1.4 in 2006, to 3.4 in 2013.^[9][3]

On 2017-09-12, a commit message policy that accommodates DVCS was established by the project.^[10]

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.^[11]

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

• Since at least 2014,^[12] Joyent has provided binary packages for SmartOS/illumos, macOS,^[5] and Enterprise Linux (CentOS/Oracle/Red Hat/Scientific).^[4][12] Packages are provided on a rolling release basis from the trunk (HEAD, in CVS terminology) of pkgsrc, with updates every few days;^[5] additionally, quarterly stable releases of pkgsrc for Joyent's own SmartOS are also provided (dating back to 2012Q4).^[13]

• Since 2017,^[14] University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee has provided binary packages for NetBSD, RHEL/CentOS, and Darwin/macOS.^[15][16] Packages are only built from the quarterly releases of pkgsrc, aiding use in long-term experiments, where stability and reproducibility of the findings is of the essence.^[14]