A binary package built with xbps is a normal tar(1) archive, compressed with gzip, bzip2 or lzma and has the following structure: / /usr ------| /var ------| => Package structure that will be installed. /etc ------| ... /var/cache/xbps/metadata/$pkgname /var/cache/xbps/metadata/$pkgname/flist /var/cache/xbps/metadata/$pkgname/props.plist /var/cache/xbps/metadata/$pkgname/postpre-action.sh Metadata info is stored in the "/var/cache/xbps/metadata/$pkgname" directory and two files will be always be present: flist and props.plist. The flist file contains the list of files that the package will install. The props.plist file is a proplib(3) property list and has the following structure: architecture x86_64 installed_size 500000 configuration_files /etc/foo.conf ... run_depends bofh-2.0 foof-1.1 ... This plist might be extended in the future if it's required or useful. Additional scripts might be added to trigger some actions at pre/post installation stages.