.Dd April 14, 2013

.Op Fl dlOt

.Op Fl f Ar plist-file

.Nm

.Op Fl dlOt

.Fl M Ar metadatafile

.Pp

.Nm

assembles a full set of package meta-data from various possible inputs,

and writes the meta-data into the package registry database.

This is one of the final steps when installing software from ports:

the package files are installed into the filesystem, and then

.Nm

is called to record what was installed into the package database.

.Pp

.Nm

can derive package meta-data from a number of different sources:

.Bl -bullet

.It

The package manifest

.It

The metadata directory

.It

Direct analysis of files installed by the package

.El

.Pp

The package manifest is a

.Cm YAML

format listing of package meta-data.

It can contain all of the necessary meta-data needed by the package,

but the more usual approach is to provide selected items via the

manifest, and fill in the rest, either from legacy files such as

.Fa pkg-plist ,

.Fa +DESC,

.Fa +DISPLAY,

.Fa +MESSAGE

or

.Fa +MTREE_DIRS

which are optional and mostly located in the

.Ar metadatadir

given as the argument to the

.Fl m

option.

.Pp

Other information about shared library requirements and the packages

necessary to provide them may be obtained by direct analysis of the

files installed by the package.

This is the mechanism currently used when installing software directly

from the ports tree, as it provides reasonable backwards compatibility

with the old style

.Xr pkg_add 1

command.

.Pp

Reading in a complete and comprehensive manifest from one file is a

simpler alternative, but requires all the meta-data to have been

assembled beforehand.

.Pp

Direct analysis of the installed files can be suppressed by use of

the

.Fl t

option.

This is intended for testing the functionality of

.Xr pkg 8

itself, and should not be routinely used.

Mark the package to be automatically removed if no other packages

depend on it.

Specifies a

.Fa pkg-plist

style packing list file

Specifies the package input path or staging directory.

.It Fl l

Tells

.Nm

to generate an old-style package registry entry in a sub-directory of

.Sy $PKG_DBDIR

rather than updating the

.Fa local.sqlite

database.

.It Fl M Ar manifest

Specifies the package manifest file.

Use of this option means that the only file which will be used as a

source of package meta-data is the named

.Ar manifest

file.

The

.Fl M

option is mutually exclusive with

.Fl m .

.It Fl m Ar metadatadir

Specifies the meta data directory to use when registering the package.

This directory will hold the package manifest, and optionally may contain

a number of other old-style metadata input files.

The

.Fl m

option is mutually exclusive with

.Fl M .

.It Fl t

Enable testing mode.

This allows

.Nm

to update the package database without performing any of the usual

analyses of files installed by the package.

This option should only be used with caution, and preferably only

for the intended purpose of performing regression tests on

.Xr pkg 8

itself.