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<h1 class="article-title">OS X package receipts</h1>
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<time class="article-timestamp" datetime="2014-10-25T13:26:02-0700">October 25, 2014</time>
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<p>I just learned something new. Whenever you install a <code>pkg</code> on OS X, OS X stores a receipt of what was installed in <code>/var/db/receipts</code> (I'm running OS X 10.9.5 at the time of writing), called a <strong>bom</strong> — bill of materials (I’d rather call it a manifest, whatever). This feature was introduced in NeXTSTEP. From <code>man 5 bom</code>:</p>
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<p>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, <strong>bom</strong>, 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.</p>
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<p><code>man 5 bom</code> 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 <code>/var/db/receipts</code> a long time ago.</p>
<p><code>.bom</code> files are binary, but you can access the contents via <code>lsbom</code>. For instance, to list the files installed,</p>
<pre><code>lsbom -f /var/db/receipts/org.macports.MacPorts.bom</code></pre>
<p>Note that the paths printed are always relative to <code>/</code>. See <code>man 1 lsbom</code> for detailed option listing.</p>
<p>(Beware when you try to clean up unwanted packages using the <code>lsbom</code> 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 <code>sudo</code> anyway.)</p>
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