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Annotation of www/ports.html, Revision 1.7

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                      4:     <TITLE>
                      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">
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1.6       tacho      15:     <IMG ALT="[OpenBSD]" SRC="images/smalltitle.gif">
1.5       tacho      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.
1.7     ! joey       66:       Our <A HREF="mailto:joey@openbsd.org">ports coordinator</A> has set up a
1.5       tacho      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
1.7     ! joey       70:       <A HREF="mailto:joey@openbsd.org">Ejovi Nuwere</A> (preferably),
1.5       tacho      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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