Annotation of www/ports.html, Revision 1.13
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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: <h3>
35: <b>Short description and setup</b></h3>
1.9 joey 36: The ports idea is to have, for each piece of software, a Makefile that
1.11 deraadt 37: <ul>
38: <li>Describes where to fetch it,
39: <li>How to do the fetch,
40: <li>What it is depending upon (if anything),
41: <li>how to alter the sources (if needed),
42: <li>and how to configure, build and install it.
43: </ul>
44: <p>
45: Normally this information is kept in an hierarchy under /usr/ports
1.10 deraadt 46: (however, this is configurable).
47: <p>
1.11 deraadt 48: We recommend reading the <a href="http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/ports.html">ports
49: chapter</a> in the <a href="http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/">FreeBSD handbook</a>
1.9 joey 50: to get information on how to setup this hierarchy until OpenBSD can complete
1.10 deraadt 51: its own ports.helpfile
1.11 deraadt 52: <h3>
53: <b>Example</b></h3>
1.9 joey 54: Let's say you managed to get a ports tree sitting under /usr/ports, then
55: you should be able to something like this:
1.11 deraadt 56: <pre>
1.10 deraadt 57: % cd /usr/ports/archivers/unzip
58: % make
59: % su
60: # make install
61: # exit
1.11 deraadt 62: </pre>
1.9 joey 63: Easy, huh?
1.11 deraadt 64: <h3>
65: <b>Problems and contacts</b></h3>
66: Our <a href="mailto:joey@openbsd.org">ports coordinator</a> is currently
67: working on a ports status page.
68: <p>
69: If you have trouble with ports contact
70: <a href="mailto:joey@openbsd.org">Ejovi Nuwere</a> (preferably),
71: <a href="mailto:gene@openbsd.org">Gene Skonicki</a>, or
72: <a href="mailto:todd@openbsd.org">Todd Tyrone Fries</a>.
73: <p>
74: Please provide either patches or enough details for repair, if you
75: cannot do this, point us at the problematic port and tell us what
76: fails and we shall try to fix it.
77:
78: <hr>
79: <a href="index.html"><img src=back.gif border=0 alt=OpenBSD></a>
80: <a href=mailto:www@openbsd.org>www@openbsd.org</a>
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