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PKG-REPOSITORY(5) File Formats Manual PKG-REPOSITORY(5) NAME package repository -- format and operation of package repositories used by pkg(8). DESCRIPTION Package repositories used by the pkg(8) program consist of one or more collections of packages together with package catalogues and various other collected package metadata. Each collection consists of packages suitable for installation on a specific system ABI: a combination of operating system, CPU architec- ture, OS version, word size and, for certain processors, endianness or similar attributes. The package collections are typically made available to users for down- load via a web server although various other means of access may be em- ployed. Encoding the ABI value into the repository URL allows pkg to automatically select the correct package collection by expanding the special token ${ABI} in pkg.conf. Repositories may be mirrored over several sites: pkg has built-in sup- port for discovering available mirrors dynamically given a common URL by several mechanisms. REPOSITORY FORMAT The current repository format is version 2. It is generated by pkg-repo(8). A repository consists of package files (.pkg) and a set of catalogue files at the root of the repository. Catalogue Files The following files are generated at the REPOSITORY_ROOT by pkg-repo(8): meta.conf A UCL file describing the repository metadata. It contains the following fields: version The repository format version (cur- rently 2). packing_format The compression format used for cata- logue archives (tzst, txz, tbz, tgz, or tar). manifests The name of the uncompressed manifests file (default: packagesite.yaml). manifests_archive The base name of the compressed mani- fests archive (default: packagesite). data The name of the uncompressed data file (default: data). data_archive The base name of the compressed data archive (default: data). filesite The name of the uncompressed file listing (default: filesite.yaml). filesite_archive The base name of the compressed file listing archive (default: filesite). maintainer Optional maintainer string. source Optional source string. source_identifier Optional source identifier. revision Optional integer revision number. eol Optional end-of-life timestamp (Unix epoch). packagesite.pkg (Deprecated, kept for backward compatibility.) A com- pressed archive containing packagesite.yaml, a con- catenation of the manifests from all packages in the repository. Each manifest is represented as a single- line compact JSON text, and the manifests are sepa- rated by newlines. Superseded by data.pkg. data.pkg The primary catalogue archive, containing the data file in JSON format with the following top-level keys: groups An array of package group defini- tions (if configured). expired_packages An array of expired package entries (if configured). packages An array of all package manifests. filesite.pkg (Optional, generated with -l flag to pkg-repo(8)). A compressed archive containing filesite.yaml, a con- catenation of the file lists from all packages in the repository. Compressed archives use the .pkg extension and default to Zstandard (tzst) compression. When a repository uses a different compression format, the meta.conf file indicates which format is used. Repositories may optionally be signed. See pkg-repo(8) for details on signing repositories. Package Layout Packages are stored as .pkg files within the repository hierarchy. The repository catalogue records the relative path from the REPOSITORY_ROOT to each package, allowing the full URL for downloading to be con- structed. Each of the packages listed in the repository catalogue must have a unique name. There are no other constraints: package sets are not re- quired to be either complete (i.e., with all dependencies satisfied) or self-consistent within a single repository. Hash Mode When pkg-repo(8) is invoked with the -h flag, packages are reorganized into a Hashed subdirectory with a SHA256 hash appended to the filename, separated by a tilde (`~'). With the additional -s flag, symbolic links are created in the original location pointing to the hashed file. Groups Package groups allow organizing packages into logical collections. Groups are defined in UCL files within a directory passed to pkg-repo(8) via the -g flag. Each group file contains: name The group name (required). comment A description of the group (required). requires An array of required group names. depends An array of dependent group names. Expired Packages Repositories can declare packages as expired. Expired packages are de- fined in UCL files and contain: name The package name (required). reason Why the package was expired. replaced_by The replacement package, if any. REPOSITORY ACCESS METHODS pkg uses libcurl(3) for HTTP and HTTPS access, and has built-in support for SSH and local file:// access. The following URL schemes are supported: pkg+http://, pkg+https://, https://, http://, file://, ssh:// and tcp://. The pkg+http:// and pkg+https:// schemes are used with SRV mirror type to enable DNS-based mirror discovery. For ssh:// repositories, extra arguments can be passed to ssh(1) via the SSH_ARGS per-repository option or the global PKG_SSH_ARGS setting in pkg.conf(5). The per-repository setting takes precedence over the global one. This is useful for specifying a private key (-i) or other connection options for a specific repository. Additional URL schemes can be configured via the VALID_URL_SCHEME op- tion in pkg.conf(5). The following environment variables affect HTTP and HTTPS access: HTTP_PROXY, http_proxy, HTTPS_PROXY, NO_PROXY and no_proxy. The HTTP_USER_AGENT can be configured in pkg.conf(5). REPOSITORY MIRRORING Multiple copies of a repository can be provided for resilience or to scale up site capacity. Two schemes are provided to auto-discover sets of mirrors given a single repository URL. HTTP The repository URL should download a text document containing a sequence of lines beginning with `URL:' followed by any amount of white space and one URL for a repository mirror. Any lines not matching this pattern are ignored. Mirrors are tried in the or- der listed until a download succeeds. SRV For an SRV mirrored repository where the URL is specified as pkg+http://pkgrepo.example.org/ SRV records should be set up in the DNS: $ORIGIN example.com _http._tcp.pkgrepo IN SRV 10 1 80 mirror0 IN SRV 20 1 80 mirror1 where the SRV priority and weight parameters are used to control search order and traffic weighting between sites, and the port number and hostname are used to construct the individual mirror URLs. Mirrored repositories are assumed to have identical content, and only one copy of the repository catalogue will be downloaded to apply to all mirror sites. WORKING WITH MULTIPLE REPOSITORIES Where several different repositories are configured pkg will search amongst them all in the order specified by the PRIORITY settings in the repo.conf files, unless directed to use a single repository by the -r flag to pkg-fetch(8), pkg-install(8), pkg-upgrade(8), pkg-search(8) or pkg-rquery(8). Where several different versions of the same package are available, pkg will select the one with the highest version to install or to upgrade an installed package to, even if a lower numbered version can be found in a repository earlier in the list. This applies even if an explicit version is stated on the command line. Thus if packages example-1.0.0 and example-1.0.1 are available in configured repositories, then pkg install example-1.0.0 will actually result in example-1.0.1 being installed. To override this behaviour, on first installation of the package select the reposi- tory with the appropriate version: pkg install -r repo-a example-1.0.0 and then to make updates to that package "sticky" to the same reposi- tory, set the value CONSERVATIVE_UPGRADE to true in pkg.conf. SEE ALSO pkg_create(3), pkg_printf(3), pkg_repo_create(3), pkg_repos(3), pkg-keywords(5), pkg-lua-script(5), pkg-script(5), pkg-triggers(5), pkg.conf(5), pkg(8), pkg-add(8), pkg-alias(8), pkg-annotate(8), pkg-audit(8), pkg-autoremove(8), pkg-check(8), pkg-clean(8), pkg-config(8), pkg-create(8), pkg-delete(8), pkg-fetch(8), pkg-help(8), pkg-info(8), pkg-install(8), pkg-key(8), pkg-lock(8), pkg-plugins(8), pkg-query(8), pkg-register(8), pkg-repo(8), pkg-repositories(8), pkg-rquery(8), pkg-search(8), pkg-set(8), pkg-shell(8), pkg-shlib(8), pkg-ssh(8), pkg-stats(8), pkg-triggers(8), pkg-unregister(8), pkg-update(8), pkg-updating(8), pkg-upgrade(8), pkg-version(8), pkg-which(8) FreeBSD ports 15.quarterly December 12, 2025 PKG-REPOSITORY(5)
NAME | DESCRIPTION | REPOSITORY FORMAT | REPOSITORY ACCESS METHODS | REPOSITORY MIRRORING | WORKING WITH MULTIPLE REPOSITORIES | SEE ALSO
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