Official FreeBSD Binary Packages now Available for pkgng

Bryan Drewery has announced the availability of the official FreeBSD pkgng repository:

We are pleased to announce that official binary packages are now available for pkg, the next generation package management tool for FreeBSD.

Pkg allows you to either use ports with portmaster/portupgrade or to have binary remote packages without ports.

We have binary packages available for i386 and amd64 on 8.3, 8.4, 9.1, 9.2, 10.0, and 11 (head).

Pkg will be the default starting in FreeBSD 10.

The pkg_install suite of tools pkg_create(1), pkg_add(1), and pkg_info(1) (which ports also use), are deprecated and will be discontinued in roughly 6 months. A communication regarding the deprecation of the pkg_install suite of tools will be sent separately in the future.

If you are currently not using pkg and wish to, run the following as root. Be sure not to add WITH_PKGNG=yes to your make.conf until after pkg is installed.

  # cd /usr/ports/ports-mgmt/pkg && make install clean
  # echo WITH_PKGNG=yes >> /etc/make.conf
  # pkg2ng

You can now either continue to use ports with portmaster/portupgrade, as before or switch to using binary packages only.

To use binary packages:

1. Ensure your pkg(8) is up-to-date. pkg -v should say at least 1.1.4_8. If it does not, first upgrade from ports.
2. Remove any repository-specific configuration from /usr/local/etc/pkg.conf, such as PACKAGESITE, MIRROR_TYPE, PUBKEY.
3. If this leaves your pkg.conf empty, just remove it.
4. mkdir -p /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos
5. Create the file /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/FreeBSD.conf with:

FreeBSD: {
  url: "http://pkg.FreeBSD.org/${ABI}/latest",
  mirror_type: "srv",
  enabled: "yes"
}

Note that pkg.FreeBSD.org does not have a browsable web page on it and does not have a DNS A record. This is intended as it is an SRV host. pkg(8) knows how to properly use it. You can use pkg search to browse the available packages in the repository.

Mirrors you may use instead of the global pkg.FreeBSD.org:

    pkg.eu.FreeBSD.org
    pkg.us-east.FreeBSD.org
    pkg.us-west.FreeBSD.org

Your system is now ready to use packages!

Refer to the handbook section on pkgng for usage.  Also see man pkg for examples or pkg help.


Packages are built weekly from a snapshot of the Ports Collection every Wednesday morning 01:00 UTC. They typically will be available in the repository after a few days.

Pkg 1.2 will be released in the coming month which will bring many improvements including officially signed packages. FreeBSD 10's pkg bootstrap now also supports signed pkg(8) installation.