pk is a framework that TextDrive uses to maintain a defined binary package set from a new pkgsrc jumpstart, to pruning stale packages and pushing out to a HTTP server via rsync. Joyent have switched over to using pbulk instead of pk to do bulk pkgsrc builds.
The framework comes with pkgsrc config files that help building on SmartOS, some additional patches, and support files for the SMF functionality.
The 'pk' command is intended to deal with most of the daily tasks related to package management, and the initial 'init' command starts off by hooking up all the included config bits.
It needs to be said that pk is still work in progress, and some parts are still largely Joyent Public Cloud specific (e.g. the hard wired URL of 'pkgsrc.joyent.com' as the public HTTP based repo). This will be fixed and made configurable as time goes.
See 'pk help' for a basic description of the commands. Also note that some config options can be pre-set in a ~/.pk file.
Patches are welcome, though the current aim is to only support SmartOS.
Some notes on the functionality included follow.
One of the core advantages is gained by using ZFS file systems delegated into the zone (machine) you're building inside of. Once a filesystem of 'base' (underneath the zone's root file system) is found, pk can use it to generate a structure of prefix/release relative file systems, and allow you to instantly reset to a clean table by rolling back to a 'start' snapshot. This way you can reliably avoid stray files scattered around, and make sure the file system environment is 100% consistent.
The 'base' filesystem should be available when you 'pk init' a new package set (right now it involves manually delegating the file system to the zone, from the host system (global zone).
Just a bunch of config files organized by topic, that are included from the pk.conf config file. This gets pulled by the 'pk init' command, which injects the contents of fragment.mk into the default pkgsrc mk.conf file.
Holds a set of plain text files which contain packages to be built by pk.
This directory holds SMF support files, and INSTALL/ALTERNATIVES files. For SMF functionality, you'll need to use the forked pkgsrc from:
https://github.com/joyent/pkgsrc
By default, if a 'manifest.xml' file is found for a package, in a PKGPATH directory (e.g. www/apache22) underneath SMFBASE (which defaults to 'meta'), SMF support is triggered. Subsequently if 'method' file is found, it is used as the SMF manifest's method script (unless the SMF method is already made explicit in the manifest file). See examples. Some SMF variables can be changed, see config/smf.inc.
Furthermore, if an 'INSTALL' file is found for the package, it is added to the list of the package's install scripts (to be executed at pre/post install time). This is so that install scripts can be added to packages without tainting the pkgsrc tree.
If 'ALTERNATIVES' file is found for the package, it is used as the single package's ALTERNATIVES file (pkgsrc doesn't support multiple ALTERNATIVES sources yet). At Joyent, this is used to turn around the default GNU prefix setup (GNU tools install prefix-less by default, but provide g-prefixed alternatives via pkg_alternatives).
This directory corresponds to the standard pkgsrc LOCALPATCHES functionality and only contains few interesting entries so far (above all DTrace probes for lang/erlang).