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pkgsrc VS Graphite

Compare pkgsrc VS Graphite and see what are their differences

pkgsrc logo pkgsrc

pkgsrc is a framework for building over 17,000 open source software packages.

Graphite logo Graphite

Graphite is a highly scalable real-time graphing system.
  • pkgsrc Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-06-30
  • Graphite Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-10-13

pkgsrc features and specs

  • Cross-Platform Support
    pkgsrc is designed to be a portable package management system and can be used on a variety of Unix-like operating systems, including NetBSD, Solaris, Linux, and macOS. This cross-platform capability makes it a versatile tool for developers working in diverse environments.
  • Consistency Across Systems
    Using pkgsrc allows for a consistent package management experience regardless of the underlying operating system, reducing the learning curve and maintenance overhead for administrators managing multiple systems.
  • Comprehensive Package Collection
    pkgsrc offers a wide range of software packages, providing a robust collection that can meet diverse user needs from scientific libraries to web applications.
  • Quarterly Releases
    With quarterly releases, pkgsrc provides a balanced approach between stability and keeping software up to date, offering users new features regularly while maintaining reliability.
  • Flexible Build Options
    pkgsrc supports a flexible build system, allowing users to customize package builds with specific options or dependencies, tailored to their specific needs or system requirements.

Possible disadvantages of pkgsrc

  • Smaller Community
    Compared to other popular package management systems like apt (Debian/Ubuntu) or yum (RedHat/CentOS), pkgsrc has a relatively smaller community, which might affect the availability of support and community-driven improvements.
  • Potentially Older Software
    While pkgsrc maintains stable quarterly releases, it may occasionally lag behind other systems in terms of offering the very latest versions of certain software, which might not be ideal for users needing the newest features.
  • Manual Configuration
    Setting up pkgsrc might require manual interventions and configurations, which could pose a hurdle for users unfamiliar with its setup process or those who prefer more automated solutions.
  • Dependency Management
    Although pkgsrc is quite capable in dependency handling, some users may find its dependency resolution to be less automatic or seamless compared to other systems which offer more integrated solutions.
  • Performance Overhead
    Because it is designed to be cross-platform, there can be some performance overhead associated with using pkgsrc compared to native package managers that are optimized for specific operating systems.

Graphite features and specs

  • Scalability
    Graphite is designed for high performance and can handle large volumes of time-series data, making it suitable for scaling up as data grows.
  • Flexibility
    Graphite offers a flexible schema, allowing users to define their own metrics and naming conventions that best suit their monitoring needs.
  • Integration
    Graphite integrates easily with a variety of data sources and visualization tools such as Grafana, making it a versatile option for many monitoring setups.
  • Open Source
    Being an open-source tool, Graphite has a strong community for support and contributions, and it is also free to use without licensing costs.
  • Customizability
    Graphite allows for extensive customization of dashboards and visualization options, providing users with many ways to view and interpret their data.

Possible disadvantages of Graphite

  • Complex Setup
    The initial setup and configuration of Graphite can be complex and time-consuming, often requiring in-depth knowledge of the system.
  • Performance Issues
    While Graphite is designed for high performance, it can sometimes struggle with write-heavy loads and may require additional setup to maintain efficiency.
  • High Resource Consumption
    Graphite can consume significant system resources, especially disk I/O and CPU, which might be a concern for environments with limited resources.
  • Limited Built-in Visualization
    The native Graphite-web UI is considered less feature-rich compared to more modern tools like Grafana, which may necessitate additional tools for better visualization.
  • Maintenance Overhead
    Due to its complexity and resource needs, maintaining Graphite can involve a significant overhead, particularly in larger or more dynamic environments.

Analysis of Graphite

Overall verdict

  • Graphite (graphiteapp.org) is generally considered a good tool for real-time graphing of time-series data.

Why this product is good

  • Graphite is appreciated for its powerful and flexible graphing capabilities, scalability, and open-source nature. It's widely used for monitoring and visualization due to its robust ecosystem and the ability to handle large amounts of data efficiently.

Recommended for

    Graphite is recommended for developers, system administrators, and IT professionals who need to monitor and visualize time-series data, particularly those working in environments with large-scale data monitoring needs.

pkgsrc videos

pkgsrc on ChromeOS

More videos:

  • Review - Using pkgsrc for multi-platform deployments in heterogeneous environments, G Clifford Williams

Graphite videos

Review: Samson Graphite 49 & Graphite 25 | Audio Mentor

More videos:

  • Demo - Faber-Castell 9000 graphite pencil review and tiger demo - w/ Lachri
  • Review - Graphite pencil brand review

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to pkgsrc and Graphite)
Developer Tools
21 21%
79% 79
Package Manager
100 100%
0% 0
Monitoring Tools
0 0%
100% 100
Front End Package Manager

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare pkgsrc and Graphite

pkgsrc Reviews

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Graphite Reviews

The 10 Best Nagios Alternatives in 2024 (Paid and Open-source)
Although Graphite's UI might not be the most impressive, it seamlessly integrates with Grafana for improved visualizations. It's important to note that Graphite itself doesn't collect data directly; instead, applications need to be configured to send data to Graphite. Carbon then listens for this data and forwards it to Whisper, where it is stored in time series format on...
Source: betterstack.com
4 Best Time Series Databases To Watch in 2019
Graphite is a even more established and very widely used time series database system. Graphite is a powerful monitoring tool that store numeric time series data and display them on demand via its Graphite-web interface at a fair speed. Graphite is most of the time used as a system, network and application performance metric store. Big companies such as Booking.com, Reddit...
Source: medium.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Graphite might be a bit more popular than pkgsrc. We know about 16 links to it since March 2021 and only 11 links to pkgsrc. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

pkgsrc mentions (11)

  • Debian isn't waiting for 2038 to blow up, switches to 64-bit time for everything
    > Most open source software packages are also compiled for BSD variants, they switched to 64 bit time_t a long time ago and reported back upstream any problems. * NetBSD in 2012: https://www.netbsd.org/releases/formal-6/NetBSD-6.0.html * OpenBSD in 2014: http://www.openbsd.org/55.html For packaging, NetBSD uses their (multi-platform) Pkgsrc, which has 29,000 packages, which probably covers a large swath of... - Source: Hacker News / 12 months ago
  • Our Audit of Homebrew
    > https://pkgsrc.smartos.org/install-on-macos/ Note that Pkgsrc is a NetBSD-derived project. * https://pkgsrc.org The Joyent folks leveraged it to allow their customers, who were perhaps not as familiar with Solaris/SmartOS, a larger pool of packages. Pkgsrc was running on Solaris before Joyent, Joyent built on top of it. - Source: Hacker News / almost 2 years ago
  • Show HN: Brioche โ€“ A new Nix-like package manager
    Https://pkgsrc.org/ from netbsd runs on many systems. - Source: Hacker News / about 2 years ago
  • Installing packages without an internet connection?
    It seems according to pkgsrc.org that pkgin might follow the PKG_PATH environment variable. You're supposed to set PKG_PATH="http://cdn.NetBSD.org/pub/pkgsrc/packages/NetBSD/$(uname -p)/$(uname -r|cut -f '1 2' -d.)/All/", and according to uname(1), -p gives the processor architecture and -r gives the operating system [kernel] release. Source: over 3 years ago
  • pkgsrc.se is no more :(
    It seems like pkgsrc.org hasnโ€™t got the news yet. Source: over 3 years ago
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Graphite mentions (16)

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What are some alternatives?

When comparing pkgsrc and Graphite, you can also consider the following products

Conda - Binary package manager with support for environments.

CodeRabbit - Unleash AI on Your Code Reviews with CodeRabbit

Homebrew - The missing package manager for macOS

GitHub - Originally founded as a project to simplify sharing code, GitHub has grown into an application used by over a million people to store over two million code repositories, making GitHub the largest code host in the world.

Yay - Yay is an AUR helper written in go, based on the design of yaourt, apacman and pacaur.

Prometheus - An open-source systems monitoring and alerting toolkit.