OctoPkg – A GUI for pkg-ng

The pkg-ng package manager has proven to be an effective and easy to use command-line package manager. It’s quick, it has simple syntax and it handles package dependencies well, so what’s not to like? Well, some people have suggested it would be nice if FreeBSD’s primary package manager had an optional graphical interface, something that made handling third-party software a point-n-click experience.

Developer Alexandre Albuquerque Arnt has taken on the challenge and ported the Octopi graphical package manager (popular amongst some Linux distributions) and made it work with pkg-ng. The result is OctoPkg, a simple, fast graphical package manager that can be used to install, upgrade and remove packages. OctoPkg will also fetch news from the operating system’s website to help keep the user abreast of security notifications and new releases. Arnt has screen shots of OctoPkg in action on his website.

People who want to test drive the new package manager can grab the latest source code from Arnt’s GitHub repository.