From 35899d0542052f42b4aa44fc873bd4b0bbf846dc Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Zhiming Wang Date: Sat, 25 Oct 2014 13:45:24 -0700 Subject: 20141025 OS X package receipts --- source/_posts/2014-10-25-os-x-package-receipts.md | 20 ++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 20 insertions(+) create mode 100644 source/_posts/2014-10-25-os-x-package-receipts.md (limited to 'source/_posts/2014-10-25-os-x-package-receipts.md') diff --git a/source/_posts/2014-10-25-os-x-package-receipts.md b/source/_posts/2014-10-25-os-x-package-receipts.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ab10d83f --- /dev/null +++ b/source/_posts/2014-10-25-os-x-package-receipts.md @@ -0,0 +1,20 @@ +--- +layout: post +title: "OS X package receipts" +date: 2014-10-25 13:26:02 -0700 +comments: true +categories: [os x, package, install, uninstall] +--- +I just learned something new. Whenever you install a `pkg` on OS X, OS X stores a receipt of what was installed in `/var/db/receipts` (I'm running OS X 10.9.5 at the time of writing), called a **bom** — bill of materials (I’d rather call it a manifest, whatever). This feature was introduced in NeXTSTEP. From `man 5 bom`: + +> The Mac OS X Installer uses a file system "bill of materials" to determine which files to install, remove, or upgrade. A bill of materials, **bom**, contains all the files within a directory, along with some information about each file. File information includes: the file's UNIX permissions, its owner and group, its size, its time of last modification, and so on. Also included are a checksum of each file and information about hard links. + +`man 5 bom` is actually badly maintained, as it says "The bill of materials for installed packages are found within the package receipts located in /Library/Receipts," whereas those have been migrated to `/var/db/receipts` a long time ago. + +`.bom` files are binary, but you can access the contents via `lsbom`. For instance, to list the files installed, + + lsbom -f /var/db/receipts/org.macports.MacPorts.bom + +Note that the paths printed are always relative to `/`. See `man 1 lsbom` for detailed option listing. + +(Beware when you try to clean up unwanted packages using the `lsbom` listing. Packages might overwrite files, so make sure you review the listing first and know what you are doing. "Knowing what you are doing" is the prerequisite for using `sudo` anyway.) -- cgit v1.2.1