Annotation of www/ports.html, Revision 1.5
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! 5: OpenBSD ports mechanism
! 6: </TITLE>
! 7: <LINK REV="made" HREF="mailto:www@openbsd.org">
! 8: <META NAME="resource-type" CONTENT="document">
! 9: <META NAME="description" CONTENT="How OpenBSD can make use of the FreeBSD ports">
! 10: <META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="openbsd,ports">
! 11: <META NAME="distribution" CONTENT="global">
! 12: <META NAME="copyright" CONTENT="This document copyright 1997 by the OpenBSD project">
! 13: </HEAD>
! 14: <BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#23238E">
! 15: <IMG ALT="[OpenBSD]" SRC="bsdsoft.gif">
! 16: <H2>OpenBSD ports mechanism</H2>
! 17: <P>
! 18: <H3><STRONG>History</STRONG></H3>
! 19: <P>
! 20: OpenBSD is a fairly complete system of its own, but still there are a lot of
! 21: software that one might want see added. However there is the problem on where
! 22: to draw the line on what to include and not, as well as licensing and export
! 23: restrictions problems. Some things just can't be shipped with the system.
! 24: We wanted to find a way for users to easily get software we don't provide
! 25: and started to look around. We didn't have to look far as a sibling project,
! 26: <A HREF="http://www.freebsd.org/">FreeBSD</A>, had an excellent mechanism for
! 27: exactly this purpose called
! 28: <A HREF="http://www.freebsd.org/ports/">"The ports collection"</A>. After
! 29: thinking about it for a while we decided to try to use their collection as is,
! 30: feeding back necessary patches to make the ports work on OpenBSD as well
! 31: to the FreeBSD maintainers.
! 32: </P>
! 33: <H3><STRONG>Short description and setup</STRONG></H3>
! 34: <P>
! 35: The ports idea is to have, for each piece of software, a Makefile that
! 36: describes where to fetch it, how to do the fetch, what it is depending upon
! 37: (if anything), how to alter the sources (if needed) and how to configure,
! 38: build and install it. Furthermore some patches will have to be kept in the
! 39: "port" as well as some administration files for the package registry utilities.
! 40: Normally this information is kept in an hierarchy under /usr/ports (however,
! 41: this is configurable). I recommend reading the
! 42: <A HREF="http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/ports.html">ports chapter</A> in the
! 43: <A HREF="http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/">FreeBSD handbook</A> to get
! 44: information on how to setup this hierarchy. A current gzipped tar-archive
! 45: of the FreeBSD ports can be found
! 46: <A HREF="ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/FreeBSD-current/ports.tar.gz">here
! 47: </A>.
! 48: </P>
! 49: <H3><STRONG>Example</STRONG></H3>
! 50: <P>
! 51: Let's say you managed to get a ports tree sitting under /usr/ports, then you
! 52: should be able to something like this:
! 53: <PRE>
1.1 niklas 54: cd /usr/ports/archivers/unzip
55: make
56: su
57: make install
58: exit
1.5 ! tacho 59: </PRE>
! 60: Easy, huh?
! 61: </P>
! 62: <H3><STRONG>Problems and contacts</STRONG></H3>
! 63: <P>
! 64: As the ports collection really is a FreeBSD thing, there are ports that do not
! 65: work in OpenBSD for various reasons. But this is going to change in the near future.
! 66: Our <A HREF="mailto:tacho@openbsd.org">ports coordinator</A> has set up a
! 67: <A HREF="http://deeplaid.uni-svishtov.bg/ports-status.html">page with the current status</A>
! 68: - what is done, what is being worked on right now, on what architecture, etc.
! 69: If you have trouble with ports contact either
! 70: <A HREF="mailto:tacho@openbsd.org">Stanislav Grozev</A> (preferably),
! 71: <A HREF="mailto:niklas@openbsd.org">Niklas Hallqvist</A> or
! 72: <A HREF="mailto:imp@openbsd.org">Warner Losh</A> and give us either patches
! 73: on how to fix things or, if you cannot do this, point us at the problematic
! 74: port and tell us what fails and we shall try to fix it.
! 75: </P>
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! 78: <A HREF="mailto:www@openbsd.org">www@openbsd.org</A>
! 79: <BR>
! 80: <SMALL>$OpenBSD: ports.html,v 1.4 1997/06/13 02:22:28 downsj Exp $</SMALL>
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