$NetBSD: README,v 1.11 2000/07/23 18:02:33 fredb Exp $ Welcome to the NetBSD Packages Collection ========================================= In brief, the NetBSD Packages Collection is a set of software utilities and libraries which have been ported to NetBSD. The packages collection software can retrieve the software from its home site, assuming you are connected in some way to the Internet, verify its integrity, apply any patches, configure the software for NetBSD, and build it. Any prerequisite software will also be built and installed for you. Installation and de-installation of software is managed by the packaging utilities. The packages collection is made into a tar_file every week: ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-current/tar_files/pkgsrc.tar.gz and you can sup the pkgsrc tree using the `pkgsrc' name for the collection. The pkgsrc tree is laid out in various categories, and, within that, the various packages themselves. You need to have root privileges to install packages. We are looking at ways to remove this restriction. + To install a package on your system, you need to change into the directory of the package, and type "make install". + If you've made a mistake, and decided that you don't want that package on your system, then type "pkg_delete ", or "make deinstall" while in the directory for the package. + To find out all the packages that you have installed on your system, type "pkg_info". + To remove the work directory, type "make clean", and "make clean-depends" will clean up any working directories for other packages that are built in the process of making your package. + Optionally, you can periodically run "make clean" from the top level pkgsrc directory. This will delete extracted and built files, but will not affect the retreived source sets in pkgsrc/distfiles. + You can set variables to customise the behaviour (where packages are installed, various options for individual packages etc), by setting variables in /etc/mk.conf. The pkgsrc/mk/mk.conf.example file provides some examples for customisation. The best way to find out what packages are in the collection is to move to the top-level pkgsrc directory (this will usually be /usr/pkgsrc), and type "make readme". This will create a file called README.html in the top-level pkgsrc directory, and also in all category and package directories. You can then see what packages are available, along with a short (one-line) comment about the function of the package, and a pointer to a fuller description, by using a browser like lynx (see pkgsrc/www/lynx) or Mozilla (pkgsrc/www/mozilla), or Communicator. This is also available online as ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/packages/pkgsrc/README.html. Another way to find out what packages are in the collection is to move to the top-level pkgsrc directory and type "make index". This will create pkgsrc/INDEX which can be viewed via "make print-index | more". You can also search for particular packages or keywords via "make search key=". It is also possible to use the packaging software to install pre-compiled binary packages by typing "pkg_add ". To see what binary packages are available, see: ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/packages///All/ where is the NetBSD release, and is the hardware architecture. One limitation of using binary packages provided from ftp.netbsd.org is that all mk.conf options were set to the defaults at compile time. LOCALBASE, in particular, defaults to /usr/pkg, so non-X binaries will be installed in /usr/pkg/bin, man pages will be installed in /usr/pkg/man... When a packaged tool has major compile time choices, such as support for multiple graphic toolkit libraries, the different options may be available as separate packages. For more information on the packages collection see the file Packages.txt where you found this README, or in your top-level pkgsrc directory.