FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions & Misc

Some questions may have already been addressed at: https://docs.pkgforge.dev/repositories/soarpkgs/faq

Also at: https://docs.pkgforge.dev/repositories/pkgcache/faq

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Toolpacks

Toolpacks was (now archived) the old repo where majority of static binaries' build scripts were hosted. It was archived on 2025-01-01 as part of a massive rewrite, you can read more at History & Lore

Android Deprecation

Android Support was deprecated on Nov 18, 2024 (Toolpacks)

1. Android is weird & very different from Linux.

2. Android has known issues that are won't fix | by design

3. Android binaries CAN NOT BE COMPILED STATICALLY without significant efforts & manual patching for each & every binary. This is not Automatable.

4. bin.pkgforge.dev/arm64_v8a_Android only ever provided Tools/Pkgs (Only for arm64-v8a) that @Azathothas personally used to use but which weren't already available in termux-pkgs or broken.

5. Termux already ports thousands of packages, Check the Issues for your pkg. There's also a near-complete list of all packages officially available on Termux: https://termux-packages.ajam.dev/

6. Check @leleliu008's project https://github.com/leleliu008/ndk-pkg, if you still don't want to use Termux.

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Windows Deprecation

Windows Support was deprecated on Nov 18, 2024 (Toolpacks)

1. Windows is centralized & thus benefits from central App Stores like the Windows Store & WinGet

2. It has some of the same issues, Android has, i.e. can't be fully statically linked.

3. There already exist UniGetUI , which is a pretty & mature wrapper around WinGet, Scoop, Chocolatey, Pip, Npm, .NET Tool, PowerShell Gallery and more

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More Architectures & OS

• We would like to build binaries for other architectures like riscv64, and the BSD Family of OSes, however our time & especially RESOURCES are limited.

• If you would like to see additional build targets prioritized, donating a Dedicated Build Server would be the optimal encouragement.

• Note: 32-Bit Binaries will likely never be Supported/Added since that's now ancient and even embedded devices now ship with 64-Bit ARCH

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History & Lore

• This, at the time of writing is, the largest collection of downloadable (without requiring compilation) & up-to-date static binaries available on the public web.

• More > than all of these COMBINED: andrew-d/static-binaries, s.minos.io/archive/, polaco1782/linux-static-binaries, borestad/static-binaries, files.serverless.industries/bin/, mosajjal/binary-tools, ryanwoodsmall/static-binaries, bol-van/bins

• All of the projects listed above, served as inspirations at one point, so we thank the authors of these projects from the deepest of our hearts. PkgForge wouldn't exist without their work.

@Azathothas used to be bug bounty hunter, a long time ago in another life. He often had to set up pentesting environments on remote Servers, at that time there used to be https://github.com/six2dez/reconftw, which installed a bunch of tools (often installing go/rust just to install the tools), this made the setup time awfully slow & frustrated him.

Eventually, ~ July, 2023, he would start modifying the setup scripts, as well as maintaining some homegrown scripts by himself. In the best of case, it was simply a wrapper around eget, to just fetch a precompiled binary from GitHub. In the worst of cases, it was installing go/rust toolchains, same as reconftw was doing just to install the tools. So he started creating repos on GitHub to build & release these binaries using GH's CI, and then using eget to pull them. The number of repos grew, and it was harder and harder to maintain each, thus ToolPacks (The precursor to all our works) was created to centralize them all. You can find all the several iterations this repository went through over the years, on the web-archive. Toolpacks was eventually archived on 2025-01-01 as part of a massive rewrite.

@Azathothas recommends reading these articles if you need a technical justification:

• "Static Linking Considered Harmful" Considered Harmful

• Dynamic Linking Is Bad For Apps And Static Linking Is Also Bad For Apps

• Oasis Linux & Anton Samokhvalov's Stalix both are distros specifically using only Static Binaries. Check their project page to learn Why.

• And then we have things like Cosmopolitan Libc & T2 SDE, they are very different from a Static Binary POV, but their rationale for doing so applies to why Static Binaries must exist.

A special mention to @pwnwriter who reached out to @Azathothas, and created the very first Package manager Hysp ~ Nov 17, 2023 . Sadly, Hysp was archived on May 26, 2024.

Another mention to @Xplshn who created a package manager in sh called bdl ~ Dec 20, 2023, which later turned into the Golang BigDL ~ Feb 5, 2024, which again turned into Dbin ~ Aug 23, 2024.

Seeing all these efforts, and some encouragements on Lobsters, @Azathothas approached @QaidVoid and Soar received it's first commit on Oct 3, 2024. One thing led to another, and the PkgForge Organization came into being on Nov 4, 2024 to do everything officially and have more control over the direction of all our projects.