Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

pkgsrc VS RANCID

Compare pkgsrc VS RANCID and see what are their differences

pkgsrc logo pkgsrc

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

RANCID logo RANCID

RANCID - Really Awesome New Cisco confIg Differ.
  • pkgsrc Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-06-30
  • RANCID Landing page
    Landing page //
    2019-04-08

pkgsrc videos

pkgsrc on ChromeOS

More videos:

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

RANCID videos

Puppet Perspectives - Rancid "Troublemaker" Album Review (feat. Dan)

More videos:

  • Review - Rancid Life Won't Wait Album Review
  • Review - Review: Rancid “Trouble Maker”

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to pkgsrc and RANCID)
Developer Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Network Automation
0 0%
100% 100
Package Manager
100 100%
0% 0
Configuration Auditing
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using pkgsrc and RANCID. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Social recommendations and mentions

RANCID might be a bit more popular than pkgsrc. We know about 9 links to it since March 2021 and only 9 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 (9)

  • Show HN: Brioche – A new Nix-like package manager
    Https://pkgsrc.org/ from netbsd runs on many systems. - Source: Hacker News / 17 days 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 1 year ago
  • pkgsrc.se is no more :(
    It seems like pkgsrc.org hasn’t got the news yet. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Slackware 15.0
    I still have a Slackware install that runs some really old stuff I have. I remember working at AN ISP in the 90s and slack was are secure distro. All the important stuff (authentication, configs, etc.) were stored and served from our 'slack pool'. Funny part is now I do a very basic Slackware install that setup pkgsrc (https://pkgsrc.org) on it so I can really experience the best and worst of times! - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • Cross-platform package management: Comprehensive comparison of Pkgsrc and Ravenports article published
    Today the second article on cross-platform package management has been published. It features a short description of what Pkgsrc and Ravenports are and a longer part on how they compare. The test environment and procedure is covered and of course the results are presented. At the end a conclusion is drawn. Source: over 2 years ago
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RANCID mentions (9)

  • Cisco switch backup/restore?
    A decade ago I worked for a shop that needed to routinely back up 100+ cisco switches and routers and refused to pay for solarwinds. I setup a light weight freebsd vm to run this open source software: https://shrubbery.net/rancid/ (Rancid: Really Awesome New Cisco config Differ) and set it to scrape all the equipment every 12 errors. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Version control for network configs
    Anyways Rancid does support cvs, svn, and git. Though I have only used it with cvs. Basically what it does, is checks out the configuration, downloads the configuration with other information about the state of the device, commits the configurations(which only changed ones will be in the latest check-ins, and then it can send an email of the changes. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Management Software for Cisco Devices?
    RANCID - Really Awesome New Cisco confIg Differ monitors a router's (or more generally a device's) configuration, including software and hardware (cards, serial numbers, etc) and uses CVS (Concurrent Version System), Subversion or Git to maintain history of changes. Source: about 2 years ago
  • What all are you doing with Ansible?
    If you want to use this as an opportunity to learn Ansible, or you don't want to add another tool to the stack, this is a fine use case. Otherwise, I would consider using either RANCID or Oxidized for configuration backup. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Starting with python at 30
    Before I knew about RANCiD (https://shrubbery.net/rancid), I wrote my own Perl application to telnet into a Foundry Networks switch and TFTP its configuration to my computer so I could back it up. At a future employer, I rewrote another coworkers Perl application that collected SNMP values from devices and did stuff with it (forget what all I did then). Source: over 2 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

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

Conda - Binary package manager with support for environments.

Unimus - Unimus is a Network Automation and Configuration management (NCM) solution designed for fast deployment network-wide and ease of use. Unimus does not require learning any abstraction or templating languages, and does not require any coding skills.

Homebrew - The missing package manager for macOS

Oxidized - configuration backup software (IOS, JunOS) - silly attempt at rancid

MacPorts - The MacPorts Project is an open-source community initiative to design an easy-to-use system for compiling, installing, and upgrading either command-line, X11 or Aqua based open-source software on the Mac OS X operating system.

GenieACS - A fast and lightweight TR-069 Auto Configuration Server (ACS)