The new version of Core Linux comes with packages and appears to be fully comprised of packages (like Red Hat Linux, and unlike FreeBSD which has a core application set). These packages are simple: they are just tar.bz2 files that contain files relevant to the application, and a set of files that go under /etc/coretools/pkg.
The directory /etc/coretools contains everything related to core packages; the pkg directory has the details on each package, and the directory exec.d has plugins for the program corepkg. Plugins are just scripts that are called by corepkg.
The program corepkg lists its help if called with no parameters. Some of the more common usages might be:
corepkg --list(list current plugins)corepkg --exec=info --pkgname=pkg(package information by name: pkg)corepkg --exec=list(list all installed packages)
The plugins as installed are:
- contents – list files created by package named
- count – count packages matching specified options
- info – information on specified package
- install – install specified package
- list – list installed packages
- remove – removed specified package
The packaging system is simple and driven fully by shell scripts. It should be possible to ignore it without adverse effects. There don’t seem to be any packages beyond the basic system, but that may not be the case. Anyway, the goal of the original Core Linux – and its descendents – is to build your own system through compiling your own code.
UNIX Administratosphere 
I’m sorry, it is not clear to me if Core Linux offers some sort of packaging system like ‘yum’, ‘apt-get’, or ‘pkg_add’ -but a minimalistic one- that you can use to download the extras you want to include/ use (and that it will take care of the dependencies)
Or the CL packaging systems is strictly limited to the set of basic packages that it offers?
Core Linux offers the most basic of packaging; best I can tell, it does not offer dependency resolution nor remote fetching.
I would suggest that the packaging system is in an alpha state, though I don’t know for sure. My suggestion would be to either ignore it or scrap it and use Core for the basic use it was designed for originally.
I’m not a fan of using packages on a system like this. If you want packages, download RPM and build it yourself (isn’t that what Core is about?).