Pkgsrc Is Cool (2022)
The author discusses the benefits of using pkgsrc, a portable package manager originally from NetBSD, for building software from source. The piece emphasizes the advantage of keeping the base system clean by isolating installed packages.
Why it matters
For developers and power users, efficient package management is critical for system stability and maintaining clean software environments.
I think I saw something about pkgsrc pop up randomly in my Mastodon feed a few months ago. Before that, I had never heard of it. And now...well now I'm currently writing these words in a version of Emacs that I built from source with pkgsrc.
Pkgsrc is NetBSD's package manager, but thanks to NetBSD's portability philosophy, pkgsrc is fully supported as a package manager on other Unix-like operating systems like Linux, Mac, and Solaris. It supports installing binary packages, but the reason I was interested in it is that pkgsrc supports building packages from source as well.
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