Pkgsrc Is Cool (2022)

Joker_vD

> Half the time I delete the program I was testing out anyway, but then I’m stuck with this extra stuff in my base system. "apt autoremove", no? > I never really even stopped to think that there might be way to separate out the “base system” from the other crap I’ve installed along the way. That's the Windows-way, not the UNIX-way. /s > Even better, pkgsrc lets you use it in unprivileged mode and install stuff locally in your user’s home directory like ~/pkg. This can give your user their own separate custom userland from other users. A nascent form of containerization (but without, you know, all of the actual isolation). Also, I am fairly certain e.g. dpkg can do this too. > Pkgsrc isn’t really a package repository itself. It is simply a collection of Makefiles that define how to build each package as well as the dependencies needed for a package. Each package’s Makefile defines where to download the source code for the package, how to apply any necessary patches, and then how to build it. Ah, and now the ugly parts. How much value is all of this anyway, compared to fetching the tarball from the project's site and running make on your own? I guess the "patches to apply" is the most valuable part of all of this. > One potentially “irrational” requirement of mine was that I wanted to be able to install software from my own network in case the internet ever goes down. Not just my internet, but THE internet. And I know that the internet as whole will probably never really go down, but I do think it may get to the point where the internet is fragmented into completely different silos because of government censorship. I'm fairly certain it already has happened in a couple of places, and it doesn't looks like the trajectory is gonna change.

bionsystem

It is. Probably an even greater gift to earth from the NetBSD community than NetBSD itself. The ability to run recent packages on most arch without them forcing you to use NetBSD, but allowing you to keep the original OS in many cases if you want, is mind-blowing.

throw0101a

In a similar vein, Spack and Easybuild are similar (more recent) build systems which are often used in the HPC space. * https://spack.io * https://easybuild.io

gpvos

It's funny to see someone discovering things that are obvious to me since I've been around a bit longer (like what tarballs are for).

jmclnx

Yes, I really like pkgsrc. It is too bad Linux distros did not embrace pkgsrc, instead we have more package managers then one can imagine. Having one common pkg manager would have made new user adoption easier. But seems Linux does not care about portability these days :( This is one other thing I get, it is part of a audit report mailed out on my NetBSD system showing vulnerabilities of packages installed via pkgsrc. Yet another thing Linux is missing. Date: Thu, 16 Jul 2026 18:10:08 -0400 (EDT) From: Charlie Root To: my_id@localhost Subject: Installed package audit result Package x265-4.1 has a denial-of-service vulnerability, see https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2017-13666 Package gd-2.3.3nb17 has a denial-of-service vulnerability, see https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2021-38115 Package gtar-1.35 has a directory-traversal vulnerability, see https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-45582

jmbwell

Another one of the underdogs I seem to like to pick. I find it so much more elegant than homebrew. Fight the hegemony!

Tractor8626

> I don't know how to make debs and rpms There is tool called nfpm for easy package creation.