PKGSRC for macOS

PKGSRC’s website describe pkgsrc as:

Portable Package Management

pkgsrc is a framework for building over 25,000 open source software packages. It is the native package manager on SmartOS, NetBSD, and Minix, and is portable across 23 different operating systems. Use one package manager across all of your systems!

In my experience, pkgsrc package manager works great for command line programs on macOS. I use and recommend both, Brew and pkgsrc. But use pkgsrc exclusively for command line programs.

Some of the packages I use are Python, Stow, Aria2, RSync, W3m, Lynx and Ansible.

This is a list of some commands used to operate PKGSRC:

pkgin update
pkgin upgrade
pkgin install
pkgin uninstall
pkgin list

‘pkgin update’ and ‘pkgin upgrade’ are used to update and upgrade the installed software, similarly to how APT works on Debian. ‘pgkin install’ and ‘pgkin uninstall‘ install and remove new software. ‘pkgin list‘ list the current installed software.

It’s important to note that installing software with pkgsrc requires sudo authentication. And once setup, pkgsrc will manage the update and upgrading of itself.

Links

• Portable Package Management - pkgsrc