Part of macOS 26.4, in fact: https://eclecticlight.co/2026/09/19/macos-tahoe-26-4-changed..."The layout of those hasn’t changed in over six years up to and including macOS Tahoe 26.3.1, but has altered in 26.4 and Golden Gate, with the addition of a new firmlinked directory pkg."
> I only started looking into this when I noticed an unfamiliar entry starting with /pkg in my PATH. I assumed something had gone awry. Then I saw that there was, indeed, a /pkg directory in the root of my filesystem. [Emphasis mine —JvD]
See, that's your problem: you think of it as your PATH and your filesystem. But it's actually Apple's and Apple's macOS's filesystem and PATH variable. They may allow you to use those to e.g. store your data and operate on it, but mostly it belongs to them, so they arrange it as they see it better fitting them. And of course, they don't really owe you an explanation of their design decisions, especially such non-user facing ones.
yeah i'm happy to be on linux fulltime now from macos. you have the ultimate control over your system at the end of the day and can inspect how everything works and change it. toshy made it easier to keep my muscle memory of mac keybindings which i love and it works really well out of the box. there was a month or two before i installed it because i though it would be this big deal that would break things but to my surprise most everything worked well ootb.
Linux is such a beautiful thing for many reasons. For those with the will, desire, and means to use it, it’s a great option.
I think from Apple’s perspective it’s the “I don’t think about you at all” meme. The users who have the will, desire, and means to switch to Linux are not their core target audience. It’s a mutually satisfactory breakup.
I swear, the parasocial relationships some people have with Apple ... it's not like they're the first and only Unix vendor to have opinions on the filesystem.
> "Turns out, this is part of macOS 27.0…"
Part of macOS 26.4, in fact: https://eclecticlight.co/2026/09/19/macos-tahoe-26-4-changed... "The layout of those hasn’t changed in over six years up to and including macOS Tahoe 26.3.1, but has altered in 26.4 and Golden Gate, with the addition of a new firmlinked directory pkg."
Apple doesn't do this stuff lightly. A search of WWDC sessions doesn't mention /pkg specifically, but I'd bet it's related to this: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2026/206/?time=6...
> It’s also not clear what the “pmk” in /etc/paths.d/10-pmk-global refers to.
Maybe package management kit, if we go by recent Apple naming conventions.
So they might be aiming for their own brew? Or is there some expectation for a different thing altogether?
As a NetBSD user, I would guess it is for use with pkgsrc. That would be great for mac people if my wild guess is correct.
http://pkgsrc.org/
Does pkgsrc use the env, etc, inv, and var subdirectories of /pkg seen here?
> I only started looking into this when I noticed an unfamiliar entry starting with /pkg in my PATH. I assumed something had gone awry. Then I saw that there was, indeed, a /pkg directory in the root of my filesystem. [Emphasis mine —JvD]
See, that's your problem: you think of it as your PATH and your filesystem. But it's actually Apple's and Apple's macOS's filesystem and PATH variable. They may allow you to use those to e.g. store your data and operate on it, but mostly it belongs to them, so they arrange it as they see it better fitting them. And of course, they don't really owe you an explanation of their design decisions, especially such non-user facing ones.
May or may not be /s
yeah i'm happy to be on linux fulltime now from macos. you have the ultimate control over your system at the end of the day and can inspect how everything works and change it. toshy made it easier to keep my muscle memory of mac keybindings which i love and it works really well out of the box. there was a month or two before i installed it because i though it would be this big deal that would break things but to my surprise most everything worked well ootb.
Linux is such a beautiful thing for many reasons. For those with the will, desire, and means to use it, it’s a great option.
I think from Apple’s perspective it’s the “I don’t think about you at all” meme. The users who have the will, desire, and means to switch to Linux are not their core target audience. It’s a mutually satisfactory breakup.
I swear, the parasocial relationships some people have with Apple ... it's not like they're the first and only Unix vendor to have opinions on the filesystem.