FreeBSD pkg¶

FreeBSD’s binary pkg frontend, fetching pre-compiled artifacts from the official FreeBSD repository.

Note

outdated parses pkg upgrade --dry-run rather than pkg version, because only the dry-run names the target version each package would move to.

Caution

sync forces IGNORE_OSVERSION=yes: a package built for a newer FreeBSD than the running kernel would otherwise trigger an interactive confirmation that hangs the subprocess. Honoring that variable is also why the version floor is 1.11.

Home page: https://github.com/freebsd/pkg
Source: meta_package_manager/managers/pkg.py
Version requirement: >=1.11

Platforms¶

🅱️ BSD (FreeBSD only)

Operations¶

Operation	Supported
`installed`	✓
`outdated`	✓
`search`	✓
`install`	✓
`upgrade`	✓
`upgrade_all`	✓
`remove`	✓
`sync`	✓
`cleanup`	✓

Ecosystem¶

Accepted purl types: pkg:pkg

Usage¶

$ mpm --pkg installed
$ mpm --pkg search "query"
$ mpm --pkg upgrade --all
$ mpm install pkg:pkg/hello
$ mpm --dry-run --pkg upgrade --all

Every example above accepts --dry-run, which simulates the underlying manager calls without touching the system: the safe way to watch what mpm would do before trusting it.

Deselect the manager for a single run with --no-pkg, disable it from your configuration, or tune its invocation attributes with per-manager overrides.

Command line¶

CLI names, in lookup order: pkg
Arguments forced before each call: --quiet

The version is extracted from the output of pkg --version with:

r"(?P<version>\S+)"

Privilege escalation¶

mpm runs this manager as the current user and never prepends sudo by default. Flip the policy for its privileged operations with --sudo or the per-manager sudo override.

See privilege escalation for the full policy.

Cooldown¶

State of FreeBSD pkg’s release-age gating, from the cooldown support table:

Status: ❌ None

With --cooldown set, mpm skips this manager’s install and upgrade operations rather than run them unguarded (fail-closed); --allow-unsupported-managers opts back in.

Reference traces¶

Raw native outputs captured in the manager source: the reference mpm’s parsers were written against. If you know FreeBSD pkg well and a transcript below looks wrong, or a newer release changed its output format, report it.

$ pkg query "%n %v %c"
7-zip 21.07_2 Console version of the 7-Zip file archiver
ap24-mod_mpm_itk 2.4.7_2 Run each vhost under a separate uid and gid
apache24 2.4.57 Version 2.4.x of Apache web server
aquantia-atlantic-kmod 0.0.5_1 Aquantia AQtion (Atlantic) Network Driver
arcconf 3.07.23971,1 Adaptec SCSI/SAS RAID administration tool
areca-cli-amd64 1.14.7.150519,1 Command Line Interface for ARC-xxxx RAID
base64 1.5_1 Utility to encode and decode base64 files
bash 5.1.12 GNU Project's Bourne Again SHell
beadm 1.4_1 Solaris-like utility to manage Boot Environments on ZFS

$ pkg upgrade --dry-run
Updating FreeBSD repository catalogue...
FreeBSD repository is up to date.
All repositories are up to date.
Checking for upgrades (312 candidates): 100%
Processing candidates (312 candidates): 100%
The following 466 package(s) will be affected (of 0 checked):

Installed packages to be REMOVED:
    freenas-files: 13.0_1700495253
    py39-midcli: 20190509171453
    py39-middlewared: 13.0_1700495253

New packages to be INSTALLED:
    abseil: 20230125.3 [FreeBSD]
    argp-standalone: 1.5.0 [FreeBSD]
    brotli: 1.1.0,1 [FreeBSD]

Installed packages to be UPGRADED:
    7-zip: 21.07_2 -> 23.01 [FreeBSD]
    apache24: 2.4.57 -> 2.4.58_1 [FreeBSD]
    apr: 1.7.0.1.6.1_1 -> 1.7.3.1.6.3_1 [FreeBSD]
    aquantia-atlantic-kmod: 0.0.5_1 -> 0.0.5_2 [FreeBSD]
    bash: 5.1.12 -> 5.2.21 [FreeBSD]

$ pkg version --like "<"
Updating FreeBSD repository catalogue...
FreeBSD repository is up to date.
All repositories are up to date.
7-zip-21.07_2                      <
apache24-2.4.57                    <
apr-1.7.0.1.6.1_1                  <
aquantia-atlantic-kmod-0.0.5_1     <
bash-5.1.12                        <