Annotation of www/ports.html, Revision 1.12
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9: <title>OpenBSD ports mechanism</title>
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1.9 joey 14:
1.11 deraadt 15: <h2>OpenBSD ports mechanism</H2>
16:
17: <h3>
18: <b>History</b></h3>
1.9 joey 19: OpenBSD is a fairly complete system of its own, but still there is a lot
20: of software that one might want see added. However there is the problem
1.11 deraadt 21: on where to draw the line as to what to include, as well as the occasional
22: licensing and export restriction problems.
23: In what is supposed to be small stand-alone unix-like operating system,
24: some things just can't be shipped with the system.
1.10 deraadt 25: We wanted to find a way for users to easily get software we don't provide
26: and started to look around. We didn't have to look far as a sibling project,
1.11 deraadt 27: <a href="http://www.freebsd.org/">FreeBSD</a>, had an excellent mechanism
28: for exactly this purpose called
29: <a href="http://www.freebsd.org/ports/">"The ports collection"</a>.
30: At first we tried to use their collection as-is, but due to incompatibility
31: problems between FreeBSD and OpenBSD we decided to branch out and create
32: our very own OpenBSD Ports Project using FreeBSD's as a starting point.
33: This also allows us to tune the ports better to our system.
34: <br>
35: <h3>
36: <b>Short description and setup</b></h3>
1.9 joey 37: The ports idea is to have, for each piece of software, a Makefile that
1.11 deraadt 38: <ul>
39: <li>Describes where to fetch it,
40: <li>How to do the fetch,
41: <li>What it is depending upon (if anything),
42: <li>how to alter the sources (if needed),
43: <li>and how to configure, build and install it.
44: </ul>
45: <p>
46: Normally this information is kept in an hierarchy under /usr/ports
1.10 deraadt 47: (however, this is configurable).
48: <p>
1.11 deraadt 49: We recommend reading the <a href="http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/ports.html">ports
50: chapter</a> in the <a href="http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/">FreeBSD handbook</a>
1.9 joey 51: to get information on how to setup this hierarchy until OpenBSD can complete
1.10 deraadt 52: its own ports.helpfile
1.11 deraadt 53: <h3>
54: <b>Example</b></h3>
1.9 joey 55: Let's say you managed to get a ports tree sitting under /usr/ports, then
56: you should be able to something like this:
1.11 deraadt 57: <pre>
1.10 deraadt 58: % cd /usr/ports/archivers/unzip
59: % make
60: % su
61: # make install
62: # exit
1.11 deraadt 63: </pre>
1.9 joey 64: Easy, huh?
1.11 deraadt 65: <h3>
66: <b>Problems and contacts</b></h3>
67: Our <a href="mailto:joey@openbsd.org">ports coordinator</a> is currently
68: working on a ports status page.
69: <p>
70: If you have trouble with ports contact
71: <a href="mailto:joey@openbsd.org">Ejovi Nuwere</a> (preferably),
72: <a href="mailto:gene@openbsd.org">Gene Skonicki</a>, or
73: <a href="mailto:todd@openbsd.org">Todd Tyrone Fries</a>.
74: <p>
75: Please provide either patches or enough details for repair, if you
76: cannot do this, point us at the problematic port and tell us what
77: fails and we shall try to fix it.
78:
79: <hr>
80: <a href="index.html"><img src=back.gif border=0 alt=OpenBSD></a>
81: <a href=mailto:www@openbsd.org>www@openbsd.org</a>
1.12 ! deraadt 82: <br><small>$OpenBSD: ports.html,v 1.11 1997/11/30 14:25:33 deraadt Exp $</small>
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