10.7.2015 Funwithpkgutil|SomeThingsAreObvious

http://blog.bfitz.us/?p=1158 1/5

With Mac OS X, Apple started out in the GUI world, but over time has transitioned to a moretraditional Unix world with command-line tools, but without forcing this on most users. Forexample, you can perform and access install information via the command-line as well asthrough the GUI programs Apple supplies.

The standard on Mac OS X is the package, and this is for atomic entities, such as applications,libraries and frameworks. Installers add packages to the system; users run them (a .app is afolder that is a package that masquerades as a file).

The pkgutil command-line program gives you access to information about installed packages.manpkgutil tells us a little bit:

pkgutil(1) BSDGeneralCommandsManual

pkgutil(1)

NAME

pkgutilQueryandmanipulateMacOSXInstallerpackagesand

receipts.

SYNOPSIS

pkgutil[options][commands]

DESCRIPTION

pkgutilreadsandmanipulatesMacOSXInstallerflatpackages,and

pro

videsaccesstothe``receipt''databaseusedbytheInstaller.Options

areprocessedfirst,andaffecttheoperationofallcommands.Multiple

commandsareperformedsequentiallyinthegivenorder.

...

MAC OS X

FUN WITH PKGUTIL2013/04/17 | BRIAN FITZGERALD | LEAVE A COMMENT

Some Things Are Obvious

10.7.2015 Funwithpkgutil|SomeThingsAreObvious

http://blog.bfitz.us/?p=1158 2/5

First off, you can just get a list of all the packages installed to a specific volume. For the mostpart, packages are installed to the root volume /, and if you dont pass in a volumes option,pkgutil will default to /.

brianmacpro:~bfitz$pkgutilpackages

com.apple.MacOSX.lang.ar

com.apple.MacOSX.lang.cs

...

com.apple.MacOSX.lang.zh_CN

com.apple.MacOSX.lang.zh_TW

...

com.apple.pkg.BSD

com.apple.pkg.clangLeo

com.apple.pkg.CoreAudioSDKLeo

com.apple.pkg.CoreFP

com.apple.pkg.CoreFP1

com.apple.pkg.DeveloperToolsCLILeo

com.apple.pkg.DeveloperToolsSystemSupportLeo

...

com.apple.pkg.XcodeEssentialsSystemSupportLeo

com.apple.pkg.XcodeUserSystemSupportLeo

com.apple.pkg.xcrunLeo

GitOSX.Installer.git182.etc.pkg

GitOSX.Installer.git182.git.pkg

brianmacpro:~bfitz$pkgutilpackages|wc

87872549

My Mac currently has 87 packages installed on it (I dont install a lot of things, sorry).

You can list packages that match a pattern for example, to find all packages with the stringXcode:

brianmacpro:~bfitz$pkgutilpkgs=.\+Xcode.\+

com.apple.pkg.InstallXcodeLion

com.apple.pkg.XcodeEssentialsSystemSupportLeo

com.apple.pkg.XcodeUserSystemSupportLeo

10.7.2015 Funwithpkgutil|SomeThingsAreObvious

http://blog.bfitz.us/?p=1158 3/5

The trick with the regular expression is that it must cover the entire name, theres an impliedstart and end anchor applied to the regex, and you need to escape characters that the shellmight interpret (like

10.7.2015 Funwithpkgutil|SomeThingsAreObvious

http://blog.bfitz.us/?p=1158 4/5

usr/libexec/gitcore/git

..

usr/share/aclocal/argz.m4

usr/share/aclocal/bisoni18n.m4

usr/share/aclocal/libtool.m4

...

brianmacpro:~bfitz$pkgutilonlyfilesfiles

com.apple.pkg.DeveloperToolsCLILeo|wc

18521856102002

It installed 1852 files, and the files are as expected, command line programs and man pagesand even a suite of test code.

You can get more information about a package with pkg-info.

brianmacpro:~bfitz$pkgutilpkginfocom.apple.pkg.DeveloperToolsCLILeo

packageid:com.apple.pkg.DeveloperToolsCLILeo

version:1.0.0.9000000000.1.1249367152

volume:/

location:/

installtime:1316396966

groups:com.apple.FindSystemFiles.pkggroupcom.apple.DevToolsBoth.pkggroup

com.apple.DevToolsNonRelocatableShared.pkggroup

brianmacpro:~bfitz$dater1316396966

SunSep1818:49:26PDT2011

The install-time flag is in Unix seconds (seconds since 1970), which I turned into a human-readable date with the date command-line tool, so you can see that I installed this package(which came from an install of Xcode) on September 18, 2011.

Here we see that com.apple.pkg.DeveloperToolsCLILeo is part of several groups, and we candiscover what other packages are in a group by using group-pkgs:

brianmacpro:~bfitz$pkgutilgrouppkgscom.apple.DevToolsBoth.pkggroup

com.apple.pkg.clangLeo

com.apple.pkg.DeveloperToolsCLILeo

com.apple.pkg.gcc4.2Leo

com.apple.pkg.llvmgcc4.2Leo

10.7.2015 Funwithpkgutil|SomeThingsAreObvious

http://blog.bfitz.us/?p=1158 5/5

com.apple.pkg.X11DocumentationLeo

Of course, at this point youre reverse-engineering what some developer has as their plan forhow to organize software, and youre not likely to find this documented anywhere.