[BACK]Return to ports.html CVS log [TXT][DIR] Up to [local] / www

Annotation of www/ports.html, Revision 1.4

1.1       niklas      1: <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC  "-//IETF//DTD HTML Strict//EN">
                      2: <html>
                      3: <head>
                      4: <title>OpenBSD ports mechanism</title>
                      5: <link rev=made href=mailto:www@openbsd.org>
                      6: <meta name="resource-type" content="document">
                      7: <meta name="description" content="How OpenBSD can make use of the FreeBSD ports">
                      8: <meta name="keywords" content="openbsd,ports">
                      9: <meta name="distribution" content="global">
                     10: <meta name="copyright" content="This document copyright 1997 by the OpenBSD project">
                     11: </head>
                     12:
1.4     ! downsj     13: <BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#23238E">
        !            14:
        !            15: <img alt="[OpenBSD]" SRC="images/smalltitle.gif">
1.1       niklas     16:
                     17: <h2>OpenBSD ports mechanism</h2>
                     18:
1.4     ! downsj     19: <p>
1.1       niklas     20: <h3><strong>History</strong></h3>
                     21:
                     22: <p>
                     23: OpenBSD is a fairly complete system of its own, but still there are a lot of
                     24: software that one might want see added.  However there is the problem on where
                     25: to draw the line on what to include and not, as well as licensing and export
1.2       deraadt    26: restrictions problems.  Some things just can't be shipped with the system.
1.1       niklas     27: We wanted to find a way for users to easily get software we don't provide
                     28: and started to look around.  We didn't have to look far as a sibling project,
                     29: <a href=http://www.freebsd.org/>FreeBSD</a>, had an excellent mechanism for
                     30: exactly this purpose called
                     31: <a href=http://www.freebsd.org/ports/>"The ports collection"</a>.  After
                     32: thinking about it for a while we decided to try to use their collection as is,
                     33: feeding back necessary patches to make the ports work on OpenBSD as well
                     34: to the FreeBSD maintainers.
                     35: </p>
                     36:
                     37: <h3><strong>Short description and setup</strong></h3>
                     38:
                     39: <p>
                     40: The ports idea is to have, for each piece of software, a Makefile that
                     41: describes where to fetch it, how to do the fetch, what it is depending upon
                     42: (if anything), how to alter the sources (if needed) and how to configure,
                     43: build and install it.  Furthermore some patches will have to be kept in the
                     44: "port" as well as some administration files for the package registry utilities.
                     45: Normally this information is kept in an hierarchy under /usr/ports (however,
                     46: this is configurable).  I recommend reading the
                     47: <a href=http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/ports.html>ports chapter</a> in the
                     48: <a href=http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/>FreeBSD handbook</a> to get
                     49: information on how to setup this hierarchy.  A current gzipped tar-archive
                     50: of the FreeBSD ports can be found
                     51: <a href=ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/FreeBSD-current/ports.tar.gz>here
                     52: </a>.
                     53: </p>
                     54:
                     55: <h3><strong>Example</strong></h3>
                     56:
                     57: <p>
                     58: Let's say you managed to get a ports tree sitting under /usr/ports, then you
                     59: should be able to something like this:
                     60: <pre>
                     61: cd /usr/ports/archivers/unzip
                     62: make
                     63: su
                     64: make install
                     65: exit
                     66: </pre>
                     67: Easy, huh?
                     68: </p>
                     69:
                     70: <h3><strong>Problems and contacts</strong></h3>
                     71:
                     72: <p>
1.3       niklas     73: As the ports collection really is a FreeBSD thing, there are ports that do not
1.1       niklas     74: work in OpenBSD for various reasons.  If you find such a port contact either
                     75: <a href=mailto:niklas@openbsd.org>Niklas Hallqvist</a> or
                     76: <a href=mailto:imp@openbsd.org>Warner Losh</a> and give us either patches
                     77: on how to fix things or, if you cannot do this, point us at the problematic
                     78: port and tell us what fails and we shall try to fix it.
1.2       deraadt    79: </p>
1.1       niklas     80:
                     81: <hr>
                     82: <a href=index.html><img src=back.gif border=0 alt=OpenBSD></a>
                     83: <a href=mailto:www@openbsd.org>www@openbsd.org</a>
                     84: <br>
1.4     ! downsj     85: <small>$OpenBSD: ports.html,v 1.3 1997/02/03 12:55:49 niklas Exp $</small>
1.1       niklas     86:
                     87: </body>
                     88: </html>