Chapter 2. Where to get pkgsrc

Table of Contents

2.1. As tar file
2.2. Via SUP
2.3. Via CVS

There are three ways to get pkgsrc. Either as a tar file, via SUP, or via CVS. All three ways are described here.

2.1. As tar file

To get pkgsrc going, you need to get the pkgsrc.tar.gz file from ftp.NetBSD.org and unpack it into /usr/pkgsrc.

2.2. Via SUP

As an alternative to the tar file, you can get pkgsrc via the Software Update Protocol, SUP. To do so, make sure your supfile has a line

release=pkgsrc

in it, see the examples in /usr/share/examples/supfiles, and that the /usr/pkgsrc directory exists. Then, simply run sup -v /path/to/your/supfile.

2.3. Via CVS

To get pkgsrc via CVS, make sure you have “cvs” installed. If not present on your system, it can be found as precompiled binary on ftp.NetBSD.org. To do an initial (full) checkout of pkgsrc, do the following steps:

% setenv CVSROOT anoncvs@anoncvs.NetBSD.org:/cvsroot
% setenv CVS_RSH ssh
% cd /usr
% cvs checkout -P pkgsrc

This will create the pkgsrc directory in your /usr, and all the package source will be stored under /usr/pkgsrc. To update pkgsrc after the initial checkout, make sure you have CVS_RSH set as above, then do:

% cd /usr/pkgsrc
% cvs -q update -dP

Please also note that it is possible to have multiple copies of the pkgsrc hierarchy in use at any one time - all work is done relatively within the pkgsrc tree.