pkgsrc-darwin

This repository contains documentation, support files, and troubleshooting tips for using the pkgsrc package management system under OS X/macOS version 10.8 and later.

Last tested with: macOS Sequoia 15.0 (Apple Silicon), XCode 16.0 Command Line Tools, pkgsrc-current-20240918

Using Binary Packages

The pkgin tool provides a yum/dnf/apt-like interface for managing packages downloaded from one or more binary package repositories. Check out the excellent pkgin bootstrapping instructions.

Compiling Packages From Source

Note regarding System Integrity Protection (SIP)

With the addition of System Integrity Protection in OS X 10.11, the ability to modify most everything under /usr is now restricted, even as root, with the exception of /usr/local. These instructions and support files have been modified to use the prefix of /opt instead of the more lengthy /usr/local. Do you NOT need to disable SIP to use pkgsrc on macOS.

Bootstrapping

1. Install the Command Line Tools by runnning xcode-select --install from a terminal window. A GUI window will appear asking for confirmation to install the command line tools. The tools can also be downloaded manually; see Apple Techical Note TN2339.
2. Fetch pkgsrc.tar.xz from ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/current/pkgsrc.tar.xz
3. Extract as root: tar -C /opt --xz -xf pkgsrc.tar.xz

I prefer to keep as much as possible in the /opt/pkg tree. If you don't, you can disregard the --varbase flag and argument.

Bootstrap with:

cd /opt/pkgsrc/bootstrap && ./bootstrap --compiler clang --abi 64 --prefix /opt/pkg --pkgdbdir /opt/pkg/.pkgdb --varbase /opt/pkg/var --prefer-pkgsrc=yes --make-jobs 5 

Replace the '5' argument to --make-jobs with an integer matching the number of cores in your build machine.

While bootstrapping:

• Create and populate /etc/paths.d/pkgsrc:

/opt/pkg/sbin
/opt/pkg/bin

• Create and populate /etc/manpaths.d/pkgsrc:

/opt/pkg/man

• [optional] Add to /opt/pkg/etc/mk.conf:

PKGSRCDIR=/opt/pkgsrc
OSX_TOLERATE_SDK_SKEW=yes
MAKE_JOBS=5

# Set 'MAKEOBJDIRPREFIX=/opt/obj' in your environment when using WRKOBJDIR.
#WRKOBJDIR=/opt/obj/pkg
#PACKAGES=/opt/pkg/packages/${OPSYS}/${MACHINE_ARCH}/${OS_VERSION}
PACKAGES=/opt/pkg/packages
LOCALPATCHES=/opt/pkg/localpatches
DISTDIR=/opt/pkg/distfiles
RCD_SCRIPTS_DIR=/opt/pkg/etc/rc.d

PKG_DEFAULT_OPTIONS+=-x11
PKG_DEFAULT_OPTIONS+=-xcb

Starting Apps Automatically at Boot

Install startup framework files:

• install pkgtools/rc.d-boot
• mkdir /opt/pkg/var/run

NOTE: there are some bad rc.d scripts that hard code /etc/rc.subr, so you may want to symlink /etc/rc.subr to /opt/pkg/etc/rc.subr. Also, please file a PR so the script can be fixed.

Troubleshooting

XCode 14/macOS Ventura - struct stat64 is deprecated (or fstat64, lstat64, xxx64, etc.)

From man stat64:

TRANSITIONAL DESCRIPTION (NOW DEPRECATED)
     The fstat64, lstat64 and stat64 routines are equivalent to their 
     corresponding non-64-suffixed routine, when 64-bit inodes are in effect.
     They were added before there was support for the symbol variants, and so
     are now deprecated.  Instead of using these, set the _DARWIN_USE_64_BIT_INODE
     macro before including header files to force 64-bit inode support.

     The stat64 structure used by these deprecated routines is the same as the 
     stat structure when 64-bit inodes are in effect (see above).

Solution: change code to use non-64-suffixed syscalls. Could also #define stat64 stat and the like.

BigSur/XCode 12 - version:1:1: error: expected unqualified-id

According to this posting, XCode 12 contains a "C++20-capable compiler and the VERSION file included in the source is conflicting with the version header of your compiler because you are on a case-insensitive filesystem."

One work-around is to create an APFS container, formatted case-sensitive, and mount that container on /opt by adding the UUID of the container in /etc/fstab:

UUID=A6BBE2B5-7395-49A5-94AB-3934323D50285 /opt apfs rw,auto

The UUID can be obtained using diskutil info {disk|partition|volume|container}. Diskarbitrationd(8) will automatically mount the case-sensitive volume at boot.

Be sure to copy any existing data out of /opt before you reboot or manually mount the new filesystem over /opt.

Xcode 8 - ERROR: This package has set PKG_FAIL_REASON:
ERROR: No suitable Xcode SDK or Command Line Tools installed.

First, check that you've installed the command line tools (step #1 in the Bootstrapping section above).

With Xcode 8 it may be due to the following:

• http://mail-index.netbsd.org/pkgsrc-users/2016/09/16/msg023742.html

Due to the way pkgsrc checks OS and SDK versions, and changes Apple made in Xcode 8, building with Xcode 8 on non-macOS Sierra machines will fail.

Until this is worked around in pkgsrc, you might:

• Install macOS Sierra.
• Revert to Xcode 7 (Download from https://developer.apple.com/download/more/)
• Wait patiently (fix probably not going to be in 2016Q3 release)

NOT Xcode 8 - ERROR: This package has set PKG_FAIL_REASON:
ERROR: No suitable Xcode SDK or Command Line Tools installed.

This has cropped up again with macOS 10.14 and Xcode 11.

• xcode-select --install says the command line tools are already installed; checking /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools seems to confirm this.
• xcode-select -p returns /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools; looks good.
• Removing /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools and re-installing doesn't fix the issue.

FIX for me was to remove /Applications/Xcode.app and /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools and re-install the Command Line Tools with xcode-select --install, which is fine since I don't use the Xcode app anyway. No idea what's going on here. Possibly some bogosity with Xcode 11 and non-Catalina macOS.

Command pkg_admin fetch-pkg-vulnerabilities hangs indefinitely.

On some systems, possibly those with an IPv6 addresses (probably a red herring), the pkg_admin fetch-pkg-vulnerabilities hangs. In these cases, use curl/wget to fetch the vulnerability list via cron around 3am daily:

curl -# -o /opt/pkg/pkgdb/pkg-vulnerabilities \
    http://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/packages/vulns/pkg-vulnerabilities.gz

Large delay before graphs render when using rrdtool.

Note: This isn't an issue with pkgsrc or even unique to Darwin, but since I've observed it on Darwin and it took a while to figure out the cause I'm documenting it here in the hopes it will save others valuable time.

The delay in graph rendering is caused by the fontconfig library enumerating all the fonts on the system. Typically this only happens once and the font list is stored in a cache. A persistant delay indicates that the process using the fonconfig library doesn't have permission to create the font cache and so the fontconfig library must enumerate the the fonts every time it's called.

In the author's case, the process using the fontconfig library was httpd running as user _www, which does not have a writable home directory and, thus, was trying to create a ~/.cache/fontconfig directory in / where it did not have write access.

The author chose to create /.cache/ with the following permissions and ownership:

drwxrwxrwx  3 root  wheel  102 Feb 16 11:51 /.cache

On the next call to the fontconfig library user _www was able to create and populate the cache directory.

/.cache/fontconfig:
total 1400
-rw-r--r--  1 _www  wheel     144 Feb 16 11:52 2643cf6afbfb317cb17c1d21dc458165-x86_64.cache-4
-rw-r--r--  1 _www  wheel  977944 Feb 16 11:52 84c0f976e30e948e99073af70f4ae876-x86_64.cache-4
-rw-r--r--  1 _www  wheel     200 Feb 16 11:51 CACHEDIR.TAG
-rw-r--r--  1 _www  wheel  400608 Feb 16 11:51 b0a71e6bf6a8a1a908413a823d76e21f-x86_64.cache-4
-rw-r--r--  1 _www  wheel   43856 Feb 16 11:51 c94fc4589f4e4f179bb7abc5ef634560-x86_64.cache-4

Thereafter the graphs were rendered without (significant) delay.

Other Notes

• When running OS X Server, several common web ports (80, 443, 8008, 8800, and 8443) are taken by the "service proxy". Since it was in my way I disabled it by unloading the following LaunchDaemon services:

launchctl unload /Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.serviceproxy.plist
launchctl unload /Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.service.ACSServer.plist

• Since 10.15 Catalina, the default shell has been changed form Bash (3.x) to Zsh. You can install shells/bash and then chsh -s /opt/pkg/bin/bash to restore bash as your default shell (assuming if you haven't already been running bash from pkgsrc to get all the version 4.x and later goodies like shells/bash-completion.) You will need to logout and back in for the shell change to take effect.

• Since 10.14 Mavericks, the CVS client is no longer part of the base OS. Install the devel/scmcvs package.

• Since 10.13 High Sierra, telnet and ftp clients are no longer part of the base OS. Replacements can be found in the following packages:

  • net/inetutils (GNU Inetutils) provides telnet and ftp (among others). The binaries are g-prefixed (gtelnet, gftp). For convenience, I created symlinks from /usr/local/bin/{telnet,ftp} -> /opt/pkg/bin/g{telnet,ftp}.
  • net/tnftp (portable version of the NetBSD FTP client)

• net/hesiod/Makefile; add the following: LDFLAGS.Darwin+= -lresolv

• net/xymon needs additional shared memory segments. Create /etc/sysctl.conf and add the lines:

kern.sysv.shmmax=16777216
kern.sysv.shmmni=128
kern.sysv.shmseg=32
kern.sysv.shmall=4096

Then, either reboot or load them each by hand with sysctl -w.