Registries concepts

Registries are collections of ports and their versions. The curated registry is the one hosted at https://github.com/Microsoft/vcpkg. vcpkg lets you create custom registries, which may be hosted by a variety of public or private providers.

There are currently two options to implement your own registries: a Git-based registry or a filesystem-based registry.

Built-in registry

The built-in registry refers to the implicit registry typically used in classic mode scenarios, and edited directly in the directory VCPKG_ROOT.

If vcpkg was acquired using git clone, this will refer to the registry in VCPKG_ROOT itself, and is expected to be a clone of https://github.com/Microsoft/vcpkg created before running vcpkg.

Otherwise (vcpkg was acquired using the 'one liner' installer or the 'Visual Studio bundle'), this will be equivalent to a git registry with a "repository" of "https://github.com/Microsoft/vcpkg".

Git registries

Git registries are simple Git repositories. They can be shared publicly or privately via normal mechanisms for Git repositories. The vcpkg repository is an example of a Git registry.

Using Git registries offers the best experience for custom registries since you have full control over the versions and contents of your registry.

Filesystem registries

Filesystem registries, as the name implies, live on your filesystem. They are a collection of ports located in a filesystem location and offer a primitive form of version control using a separate path per version.

These type of registries are more suited to be a testing ground for your packages. Or to provide an alternative for registries in version control systems that are not Git.

Next steps

Here are some tasks to try next:

• Create your own Git-based registry
• Install packages from a custom registry
• Read the registries reference documentation