Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Spack VS pkgsrc

Compare Spack VS pkgsrc and see what are their differences

Spack logo Spack

A flexible package manager supporting multiple versions, configurations, platforms, and compilers.

pkgsrc logo pkgsrc

pkgsrc is a framework for building over 17,000 open source software packages.
  • Spack Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-13
  • pkgsrc Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-06-30

Spack videos

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pkgsrc videos

pkgsrc on ChromeOS

More videos:

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

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Spack and pkgsrc)
Front End Package Manager
Developer Tools
0 0%
100% 100
Windows Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Package Manager
16 16%
84% 84

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, pkgsrc should be more popular than Spack. It has been mentiond 9 times since March 2021. 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.

Spack mentions (1)

  • Autodafe: "freeing your freeing your project from the clammy grip of autotools."
    > Are we talking about the same autotools? Yes. Instead of figuring out how to do something particular with every single software package, I can do a --with-foo or --without-bar or --prefix=/opt/baz-1.2.3, and be fairly confident that it will work the way I want. Certainly with package managers or (FreeBSD) Ports a lot is taken care of behind the scenes, but the above would also help... - Source: Hacker News / 2 months ago

pkgsrc mentions (9)

  • Show HN: Brioche – A new Nix-like package manager
    Https://pkgsrc.org/ from netbsd runs on many systems. - Source: Hacker News / 4 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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What are some alternatives?

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

Homebrew - The missing package manager for macOS

Conda - Binary package manager with support for environments.

Flatpak - Flatpak is the new framework for desktop applications on Linux

ST - Simple Terminal - st is a simple terminal implementation for X.

Portage - Portage is source-based package manager used by Gentoo and its descendants. It controls all process from fetching source through building it, installing into clean environment to "merging" with already installed software.

NixOS - 25 Jun 2014 . All software components in NixOS are installed using the Nix package manager. Packages in Nix are defined using the nix language to create nix expressions.