From owner-freebsd-questions Wed May 31 15: 2:47 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from corinth.bossig.com (corinth.bossig.com [208.26.239.66]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A64CA37BA59 for ; Wed, 31 May 2000 15:02:44 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from kstewart@3-cities.com) Received: from 3-cities.com (unverified [208.26.241.175]) by corinth.bossig.com (Rockliffe SMTPRA 4.2.1) with ESMTP id ; Wed, 31 May 2000 15:03:10 -0700 Message-ID: <39358BF1.44770478@3-cities.com> Date: Wed, 31 May 2000 15:02:25 -0700 From: Kent Stewart Organization: BOSSig X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.72 [en] (Windows NT 5.0; U) X-Accept-Language: en,pdf MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "Eric J. Schwertfeger" Cc: Vernon Buck Jr , questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Newbie question about Packages, & Ports References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG "Eric J. Schwertfeger" wrote: > > On 31 May 2000, Vernon Buck Jr wrote: > > > What's the difference between a package, and a port which is better? > > port first: A port is a Makefile and set of supporting files that tells > the machine where to fetch the source code from and how to install the > source. As such, a port is usually very small, but requires that the > source to be downloaded seperately. > > A package is the end results of the port (a "make package" command in the > port directory will generate the package). No compiling is necessary, you > usually just install the package and use it. Packages seldom come with > source. > One side effect that I have encountered recently is that a port can be broken. You do a ports cvsup and suddenly a new version is required in the ports. Right now the jadeTeX port is broken and I can't build it but I need it to make a local copy of the FreeBSD documents that I routinely cvsup. The package was built before the latest release and isn't broken. Everything else in the meta project docproj is a port but for right now, jadeTeX is a package. I'm happy because I can generate HTML and have the most recent copy without resorting to Internet access. Kent -- Kent Stewart Richland, WA mailto:kstewart@3-cities.com http://www.3-cities.com/~kstewart/index.html http://daily.daemonnews.org/ SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) @ Home http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message