Binary distribution
The binary packages that are produced by pkgsrc can be used without having to compile everything from source. NetBSD already contains the necessary tools for managing binary packages, on other platforms you need to bootstrap pkgsrc to get the package management tools installed. A browsable list of packages, including links to available binary packages, is here.
Binary packages are available on ftp.NetBSD.org and its
mirrors in
the directory /pub/pkgsrc/packages/ (see the pkgsrc guide for more
details). If the tools for managing binary packages do not exist on a
platform or are too old, they are provided along the binary packages in
an archive called bootstrap.tar.gz, which must be
extracted in the / directory. Then you can run
/usr/pkg/sbin/pkg_add to install binary packages.
See the pkgsrc
guide for detailed instructions.
Source distribution
You can download the pkgsrc tarball or check out the latest sources using AnonCVS:
#cvs checkout pkgsrc
(for using the AnonCVS service, see the Fetching by CVS section in the NetBSD Guide).
After downloading and/or extracting the sources, installing the bootstrap kit should be as simple as:
#cd pkgsrc/bootstrap#./bootstrap
This will use the defaults of /usr/pkg for the
prefix and /var/db/pkg for
the package database directory. However, these can also be set using
command-line parameters (use ./bootstrap --help
to see the available options).
Note that when using pkgsrc on a non-NetBSD system, use the bmake command instead of “make” to run NetBSD make, which is required for correct pkgsrc operation. Simply substitute “bmake” for “make” in pkgsrc documentation.