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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 col- lections of packages together with package catalogues and various other collected package metadata. Each collection consists of packages suitable for installation on a spe- cific system ABI: a combination of operating system, CPU architecture, OS version, word size and, for certain processors, endianness or similar at- tributes. The package collections are typically made available to users for download via a web server although various other means of access may be employed. 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 support 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 con- tains the following fields: version The repository format version (currently 2). packing_format The compression format used for catalogue 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 manifests 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: files). filesite_archive The base name of the compressed file list- ing archive (default: files). 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 concatena- tion of the manifests from all packages in the repository. Each manifest is represented as a single-line compact JSON text, and the manifests are separated by newlines. Super- seded 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 definitions (if configured). expired_packages An array of expired package entries (if configured). packages An array of all package manifests. files.pkg (Optional, generated with -l flag to pkg-repo(8)). A com- pressed archive containing files, a directory-grouped listing of all files in all packages in the repository. The file uses a line-based text format. Since newlines cannot appear in Unix file paths, each line is unambiguous and no encoding is required; bytes pass through as-is. The file is divided into two sections separated by an empty line: 1. A front-compressed directory dictionary, using the same technique as locate(1). Directories are sorted lexicographically; each line is "N suffix" where N is the number of bytes to keep from the previous entry and suffix is appended to form the full path. The line number (starting at 0) is the directory's index. Because sorted paths share long common prefixes, most of each path is elided. 2. Package blocks, each separated by an empty line. Within each block: * The first line is the package header: "name version". * A line starting with `>' is a directory index, selecting the current directory from the dictio- nary (e.g. `>2' selects directory index 2). The `>' prefix prevents ambiguity with file basenames that happen to be purely numeric. * All other non-empty lines are file basenames within the current directory. Example: 0 /usr/local/bin 15 lib 15 share/man/man1 bash 5.2.26 >0 bash bashbug >2 bash.1.gz curl 8.7.1 >0 curl >1 libcurl.so.4 In this example, the first directory is /usr/local/bin (index 0, prefix length 0 = full path). Index 1 keeps 15 bytes ("/usr/local/") and appends "lib" to form /usr/local/lib. Index 2 likewise keeps the same 15-byte prefix and appends "share/man/man1". The common prefix is never repeated, significantly reducing the size of the di- rectory dictionary. When a client runs pkg-update(8), the data is fetched and loaded into the local repository data- base (tables file_dirs and pkg_files), enabling pkg- rwhich(8) queries. 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 constructed. Each of the packages listed in the repository catalogue must have a unique name. There are no other constraints: package sets are not required 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, sepa- rated 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 defined 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 fetch(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 option 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 mir- rors given a single repository URL. HTTP The repository URL should download a text document containing a se- quence 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 order listed un- til 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 repository 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 repository, set the value CONSERVATIVE_UPGRADE to true in pkg.conf. SEE ALSO pkg_checksum(3), pkg_create(3), pkg_printf(3), pkg_repo_create(3), pkg_re- pos(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-au- dit(8), pkg-autoremove(8), pkg-check(8), pkg-checksum(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-rwhich(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 May 28, 2026 PKG-REPOSITORY(5)
NAME | DESCRIPTION | REPOSITORY FORMAT | REPOSITORY ACCESS METHODS | REPOSITORY MIRRORING | WORKING WITH MULTIPLE REPOSITORIES | SEE ALSO
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