Building an OpenBSD port

This page will, when completed, provide the necessary guidance. Until then, however, please look at the available porting information, the OpenBSD porting policy, and the other helpful hints provided on this page.

If you are not capable of doing all the steps in a port, please do as much as you can before submitting it. When you do submit the port, make sure you point out which parts you didn't do.

Available Porting Information

• The file /usr/share/mk/bsd.port.mk. This is the system ports makefile included at the end of each individual port makefile. Read the comments at the start of the makefile. They do a good job of describing the available make options.
• The NetBSD Package System documentation. This document describes NetBSD's version of the FreeBSD ports system and is quite helpful.
• Section 17.2.5 of the FreeBSD Handbook. This is the FreeBSD porting bible.
• The OpenBSD ports mailing list, ports@OpenBSD.ORG.

OpenBSD Porting Policy

• OpenBSD does NOT use /usr/local/etc/rc.d.
  /usr/local is often NFS mounted; shared between machines in a cluster. For this reason per machine configuration files are places in /etc.
• OpenBSD does NOT compress man pages.
• OpenBSD does NOT require -lcrypt.
  DES encryption is part of the standard libc.
• OpenBSD requests all mktemp warnings to be fixed. This is not as simple as s/mktemp/mkstemp/g. If you are not absolutely sure of what you are doing please request help from the ports mailing list.
• Any software to be installed as a server should be scanned for buffer overflows, especially unsafe use of strcat/strcpy/strcmp/sprintf. In general, sprintf should be replaced with snprintf.
• Be sure to add the $OpenBSD$ CVS tag to the Makefile. If importing a port from another system be sure to leave their tag in the Makefile, too. However, replace the FreeBSD $Id$ tag with the $FreeBSD$ tag.
• Do NOT use alpha or beta code when preparing a port. Use the latest regular or patch release.
• The goal is to get all ported applications to support OpenBSD. To achieve this goal you MUST feed any OpenBSD patches back to the application maintainer.

Other Helpful Hints

• Do not assume /usr/local/bin or /usr/X11R6/bin is in the installers path. A good way to verify this is to create and install your port while running as root with only /bin and /usr/bin in your path.
• Do NOT generate shared libraries for ${MACHINE_ARCH} == alpha
• In OpenBSD curses.h/libcurses/libtermlib are the ``new curses''. Change:
  ncurses.h ==> curses.h
-lncurses ==> -lcurses
  ``Old curses'' is available as ocurses.h/libocurses.