FreeBSD 8.4 and later includes a bootstrap utility which can be used to download and install pkg, along with its manual pages.

To bootstrap the system, run:

# /usr/sbin/pkg

For earlier FreeBSD versions, pkg must instead be installed from the Ports Collection or as a binary package.

To install the port, run:

# cd /usr/ports/ports-mgmt/pkg
# make
# make install clean

When upgrading an existing system that originally used the older package system, the database must be converted to the new format, so that the new tools are aware of the already installed packages. Once pkg has been installed, the package database must be converted from the traditional format to the new format by running this command:

# pkg2ng

To ensure that the FreeBSD Ports Collection registers new software with pkg, and not the traditional packages format, FreeBSD versions earlier than 10.X require this line in /etc/make.conf:

WITH_PKGNG=	yes

By default pkg uses the FreeBSD package mirrors. For information about building a custom package repository, see Section 5.6, “Building Packages with Poudriere”

Additional pkg configuration options are described in pkg.conf(5).

Usage information for pkg is available in the pkg(8) manpage or by running pkg without additional arguments.

Each pkg command argument is documented in a command-specific manual page. To read the manual page for pkg install, for example, run either of these commands:

# pkg help install

# man pkg-install

The rest of this section demonstrates common binary package management tasks which can be performed using pkg. Each demonstrated command provides many switches to customize its use. Refer to a command's help or man page for details and more examples.

Information about the packages installed on a system can be viewed by running pkg info which, when run without any switches, will list the package version for either all installed packages or the specified package.

For example, to see which version of pkg is installed, run:

# pkg info pkg
pkg-1.1.4_1

To install a binary package use the following command, where packagename is the name of the package to install:

# pkg install packagename

This command uses repository data to determine which version of the software to install and if it has any uninstalled dependencies. For example, to install curl:

# pkg install curl
Updating repository catalogue
/usr/local/tmp/All/curl-7.31.0_1.txz          100% of 1181 kB 1380 kBps 00m01s

/usr/local/tmp/All/ca_root_nss-3.15.1_1.txz   100% of  288 kB 1700 kBps 00m00s

Updating repository catalogue
The following 2 packages will be installed:

        Installing ca_root_nss: 3.15.1_1
        Installing curl: 7.31.0_1

The installation will require 3 MB more space

0 B to be downloaded

Proceed with installing packages [y/N]: y
Checking integrity... done
[1/2] Installing ca_root_nss-3.15.5_1... done
[2/2] Installing curl-7.31.0_1... done
Cleaning up cache files...Done

The new package and any additional packages that were installed as dependencies can be seen in the installed packages list:

# pkg info
ca_root_nss-3.15.5_1	The root certificate bundle from the Mozilla Project
curl-7.31.0_1	Non-interactive tool to get files from FTP, GOPHER, HTTP(S) servers
pkg-1.1.4_6	New generation package manager

Packages that are no longer needed can be removed with pkg delete. For example:

# pkg delete curl
The following packages will be deleted:

	curl-7.31.0_1

The deletion will free 3 MB

Proceed with deleting packages [y/N]: y
[1/1] Deleting curl-7.31.0_1... done

Installed packages can be upgraded to their latest versions by running:

# pkg upgrade

This command will compare the installed versions with those available in the repository catalogue and upgrade them from the repository.

Occasionally, software vulnerabilities may be discovered in third-party applications. To address this, pkg includes a built-in auditing mechanism. To determine if there are any known vulnerabilities for the software installed on the system, run:

# pkg audit -F

Removing a package may leave behind dependencies which are no longer required. Unneeded packages that were installed as dependencies can be automatically detected and removed using:

# pkg autoremove
Packages to be autoremoved:
	ca_root_nss-3.13.5

The autoremoval will free 723 kB

Proceed with autoremoval of packages [y/N]: y
Deinstalling ca_root_nss-3.15.1_1... done

Unlike the traditional package management system, pkg includes its own package database backup mechanism. This functionality is enabled by default.

To restore the contents of a previous package database backup, run the following command replacing /path/to/pkg.sql with the location of the backup:

# pkg backup -r /path/to/pkg.sql

To run a manual backup of the pkg database, run the following command, replacing /path/to/pkg.sql with a suitable file name and location:

# pkg backup -d /path/to/pkg.sql

By default, pkg stores binary packages in a cache directory defined by PKG_CACHEDIR in pkg.conf(5). Only copies of the latest installed packages are kept. Older versions of pkg kept all previous packages. To remove these outdated binary packages, run:

# pkg clean

The entire cache may be cleared by running:

# pkg clean -a

Software within the FreeBSD Ports Collection can undergo major version number changes. To address this, pkg has a built-in command to update package origins. This can be useful, for example, if lang/php5 is renamed to lang/php53 so that lang/php5 can now represent version 5.4.

To change the package origin for the above example, run:

# pkg set -o lang/php5:lang/php53

As another example, to update lang/ruby18 to lang/ruby19, run:

# pkg set -o lang/ruby18:lang/ruby19

As a final example, to change the origin of the libglut shared libraries from graphics/libglut to graphics/freeglut, run:

# pkg set -o graphics/libglut:graphics/freeglut

# pkg install -Rf graphics/freeglut