DISTNAME is the basename of the distribution file to be downloaded from the package's website.

PKGNAME is the name of the package, as used by pkgsrc. You only need to provide it if it differs from DISTNAME. Usually it is the directory name together with the version number. It must match the regular expression ^[A-Za-z0-9][A-Za-z0-9-_.+]*$, that is, it starts with a letter or digit, and contains only letters, digits, dashes, underscores, dots and plus signs.

CATEGORIES is a list of categories which the package fits in. You can choose any of the top-level directories of pkgsrc for it.

Currently the following values are available for CATEGORIES. If more than one is used, they need to be separated by spaces:

    archivers     cross         geography     meta-pkgs     security
    audio         databases     graphics      misc          shells
    benchmarks    devel         ham           multimedia    sysutils
    biology       editors       inputmethod   net           textproc
    cad           emulators     lang          news          time
    chat          finance       mail          parallel      wm
    comms         fonts         math          pkgtools      www
    converters    games         mbone         print         x11

MASTER_SITES is a list of URLs where the distribution files can be downloaded. Each URL must end with a slash.

The MASTER_SITES may make use of the following predefined sites:

    ${MASTER_SITE_APACHE}
    ${MASTER_SITE_BACKUP}
    ${MASTER_SITE_CYGWIN}
    ${MASTER_SITE_DEBIAN}
    ${MASTER_SITE_FREEBSD}
    ${MASTER_SITE_FREEBSD_LOCAL}
    ${MASTER_SITE_GNOME}
    ${MASTER_SITE_GNU}
    ${MASTER_SITE_GNUSTEP}
    ${MASTER_SITE_IFARCHIVE}
    ${MASTER_SITE_MOZILLA}
    ${MASTER_SITE_OPENOFFICE}
    ${MASTER_SITE_PERL_CPAN}
    ${MASTER_SITE_R_CRAN}
    ${MASTER_SITE_SOURCEFORGE}
    ${MASTER_SITE_SUNSITE}
    ${MASTER_SITE_SUSE}
    ${MASTER_SITE_TEX_CTAN}
    ${MASTER_SITE_XCONTRIB}
    ${MASTER_SITE_XEMACS}

If one of these predefined sites is chosen, you may want to specify a subdirectory of that site. Since these macros may expand to more than one actual site, you must use the following construct to specify a subdirectory:

    ${MASTER_SITE_GNU:=subdirectory/name/}
    ${MASTER_SITE_SOURCEFORGE:=project_name/}

Note the trailing slash after the subdirectory name.

If the package has multiple DISTFILES or multiple PATCHFILES from different sites, set SITES_foo to a list of URIs where file “foo” may be found. “foo” includes the suffix, e.g.:

    DISTFILES=      ${DISTNAME}${EXTRACT_SUFX}
    DISTFILES+=     foo-file.tar.gz
    SITES_foo-file.tar.gz= \
            http://www.somewhere.com/somehow/ \
            http://www.somewhereelse.com/mirror/somehow/

DISTFILES: Name(s) of archive file(s) containing distribution. The default is ${DISTNAME}${EXTRACT_SUFX}. Should only be set if you have more than one distfile.

Note that the normal default setting of DISTFILES must be made explicit if you want to add to it (rather than replace it), as you usually would.

EXTRACT_SUFX: Suffix of the distribution file, will be appended to DISTNAME. Defaults to .tar.gz.

PATCHFILES: Name(s) of additional files that contain distribution patches. There is no default. pkgsrc will look for them at PATCH_SITES. They will automatically be uncompressed before patching if the names end with .gz or .Z.

PATCH_SITES: Primary location(s) for distribution patch files (see PATCHFILES below) if not found locally.

MAINTAINER is the email address of the person who feels responsible for this package, and who is most likely to look at problems or questions regarding this package which have been reported with send-pr(1). Other developers should contact the MAINTAINER before making major changes to the package. When packaging a new program, set MAINTAINER to yourself. If you really can't maintain the package for future updates, set it to <tech-pkg@NetBSD.org>.

HOMEPAGE is a URL where users can find more information about the package.

COMMENT is a one-line description of the package (should not include the package name).

WRKSRC: The directory where the interesting distribution files of the package are found. The default is ${WRKDIR}/${DISTNAME}, which works for most packages.

If a package doesn't create a subdirectory for itself (most GNU software does, for instance), but extracts itself in the current directory, you should set WRKSRC= ${WRKDIR}.

If a package doesn't create a subdirectory with the name of DISTNAME but some different name, set WRKSRC to point to the proper name in ${WRKDIR}, for example WRKSRC= ${WRKDIR}/${DISTNAME}/unix. See lang/tcl and x11/tk for other examples.

The name of the working directory created by pkgsrc is taken from the WRKDIR_BASENAME variable. By default, its value is work. If you want to use the same pkgsrc tree for building different kinds of binary packages, you can change the variable according to your needs. Two other variables handle common cases of setting WRKDIR_BASENAME individually. If OBJHOSTNAME is defined in /etc/mk.conf, the first component of the host's name is attached to the directory name. If OBJMACHINE is defined, the platform name is attached, which might look like work.i386 or work.sparc.

Add MANCOMPRESSED if man pages are installed in compressed form by the package; see comment in bsd.pkg.mk.

Replace /usr/local with “${PREFIX}” in all files (see patches, below).

If the package installs any info files, see Section 16.5.7, “Packages installing info files”.