What the heck is /pkg?

44 points by GavinAnderegg 1 day ago | 13 comments

CharlesW 1 day ago |

> "Turns out, this is part of macOS 27.0…"

Part of macOS 26.4, in fact: https://eclecticlight.co/2026/09/19/macos-tahoe-26-4-changed... "The layout of those hasn’t changed in over six years up to and including macOS Tahoe 26.3.1, but has altered in 26.4 and Golden Gate, with the addition of a new firmlinked directory pkg."

Apple doesn't do this stuff lightly. A search of WWDC sessions doesn't mention /pkg specifically, but I'd bet it's related to this: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2026/206/?time=6...

oefrha 1 day ago |

> It’s also not clear what the “pmk” in /etc/paths.d/10-pmk-global refers to.

Maybe package management kit, if we go by recent Apple naming conventions.

torben-friis 1 day ago |

So they might be aiming for their own brew? Or is there some expectation for a different thing altogether?

jmclnx 1 day ago |

As a NetBSD user, I would guess it is for use with pkgsrc. That would be great for mac people if my wild guess is correct.

http://pkgsrc.org/

Tomte 10 hours ago | |

As a new Mac user I could not decide between Macports and Homebrew, and I went with pkgsrc/pkgin. Cannot complain, have had zero reason to revisit that decision ever since.

duskwuff 1 day ago | |

Does pkgsrc use the env, etc, inv, and var subdirectories of /pkg seen here?

jmclnx 16 hours ago | | |

These are the directories under /usr/pkg on NetBSD based upon packages I installed. But setup depends upon OS and the person who set it up. I never heard of inv, maybe inv is a mac thing.

     bin   | include | pkgdb.refcount
     dict  | info    | pkgsrc
     etc   | lib     | qt5
     gcc12 | libdata | qt6
     gcc14 | libexec | sbin
     gcc16 | man     | share
     gnu   | pkgdb   | tests

On NetBSD /var used for logs other data. But I suppose someone could configure under 'pkg' if they wanted to,