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Date:      Fri, 4 May 2001 09:15:16 -0500
From:      Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>
To:        Doug Denault <doug@safeport.com>
Cc:        questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Ports - just get the required files (fwd)
Message-ID:  <15090.47476.772981.532285@guru.mired.org>
In-Reply-To: <28980227@toto.iv>

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Doug Denault <doug@safeport.com> types:
> This thread brings up some questions I have mean meaning to ask. When the
> answer is: use make some-target-I-never-heard-of, I was going to ask where
> can one find a list, but I went a_grep_ing and found /usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk.
> If this is not THE list what is? And is there any place I can read about
> port and packages.

Try "man ports". That provides a list of targets. The make.conf man
page has information about settings you can put in make.conf, some of
which are relevant to ports. The documentation may be out of date - if
so, please use send-pr to to submit updates.

> Specifically what I am looking for is how ports, packages, and
> distributions relate. I have been trying to install XFree86 over a
> distribution without doing compiles (mostly at this point because I want
> to learn how, certainly not to save time :) and,

A port is a Makefile and some other miscellaneous stuff that uses the
ports collections skeletons to download, patch and compile an
application (or library, or whatever). It can also be used to build a
tarball of all the files that are part of the application (ditto). The
resulting taball is a "package".

I'm not sure what you mean by "distributions". If you can get a
package - meaning a compiled binary - of the XFree86 version you want
to install, you should be able to delete the old package with
pkg_delete, then use pkg_add to instal the new one. If it's not a
FreeBSD package, you'll have to follow the instructions it came with.

> I am trying to figure out the relation between the ports tree and the
> source tree. For example: my current systems are somewhere along the
> 4.2-stable line having been updated a several times. If I just cvsup the
> ports collection how can I ensure that I do not update a port to a 4.3
> only state?

The ports tree is in /usr/ports; the source tree is in /usr/src. An
individual port can download sources that aren't part of FreeBSD - or
alternatives to those included with FreeBSD; vis BIND 9 vs BIND 8 -
and install those sources, but they will go in the ports tree, not the
source tree.

If you're staying on the same branch, ports should continue
working. There are hooks to detect the version of FreeBSD the build is
happening on, and most port maintainers are conscientious about using
those to make sure that the port builds on all prior versions of the
branch in question.

If worst comes to worst, you can always grab the old version from the
CVS repository and use that.

	<mike
--
Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.

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