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Revision 1.14, Sun Nov 30 14:42:39 1997 UTC (26 years, 6 months ago) by deraadt
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I am dissapointed that noone had yet added details for users on how to GET THE PORTS. GEEZZZZ

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<h2>OpenBSD ports mechanism</H2>

<h3>History</h3>
OpenBSD is a fairly complete system of its own, but still there is a lot
of software that one might want see added. However there is the problem
on where to draw the line as to what to include, as well as the occasional
licensing and export restriction problems.
In what is supposed to be small stand-alone unix-like operating system,
some things just can't be shipped with the system.
We wanted to find a way for users to easily get software we don't provide
and started to look around. We didn't have to look far as a sibling project,
<a href="http://www.freebsd.org/">FreeBSD</a>, had an excellent mechanism
for exactly this purpose called
<a href="http://www.freebsd.org/ports/">"The ports collection"</a>.
At first we tried to use their collection as-is, but due to incompatibility
problems between FreeBSD and OpenBSD we decided to branch out and create
our very own OpenBSD Ports Project using FreeBSD's as a starting point.
This also allows us to tune the ports better to our system.
<h3>Short description and setup</h3>
The ports idea is to have, for each piece of software, a Makefile that
<ul>
<li>Describes where to fetch it,
<li>How to do the fetch,
<li>What it is depending upon (if anything),
<li>how to alter the sources (if needed),
<li>and how to configure, build and install it.
</ul>
<p>
Normally this information is kept in an hierarchy under /usr/ports
(however, this is configurable).
<p>
We recommend reading the <a href="http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/ports.html">ports
chapter</a> in the <a href="http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/">FreeBSD handbook</a>
to get information on how to setup this hierarchy until OpenBSD can complete
its own ports.helpfile
<h3>Getting the Ports tree</h3>
The ports source tree is available in several ways:
<ul>
<li>You can ftp the 2.2 version of it from the pub/OpenBSD/2.2 directory
	on any of the <a href=ftp.html>ftp mirror sites</a>.
<li>You can use <a href=anoncvs.html>AnonCVS</a> to get the most recent
	version of it, using essentially "<strong>cvs get ports</strong>".
</ul>
(Note: the version of the ports tree on the 2.2 CDROM is not the most
recent version.  You likely want to get and use a newer version).

<h3>Example use of the Ports tree</h3>
Let's say you managed to get a ports tree sitting under /usr/ports, then
you should be able to something like this:
<pre>
% cd /usr/ports/archivers/unzip
% make
% su
# make install
# exit
</pre>
Easy, huh?
<h3>Problems and contacts</h3>
Our <a href="mailto:joey@openbsd.org">ports coordinator</a> is currently
working on a ports status page.
<p>
If you have trouble with ports contact
<a href="mailto:joey@openbsd.org">Ejovi Nuwere</a> (preferably),
<a href="mailto:gene@openbsd.org">Gene Skonicki</a>, or
<a href="mailto:todd@openbsd.org">Todd Tyrone Fries</a>.
<p>
Please provide either patches or enough details for repair, if you
cannot do this, point us at the problematic port and tell us what
fails and we shall try to fix it.

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<br><small>$OpenBSD: ports.html,v 1.14 1997/11/30 14:42:39 deraadt Exp $</small>

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