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Date:      Fri, 29 Mar 2002 10:10:23 -0800
From:      "Freddie Cash" <fcash@ocis.net>
To:        Dale Morris <dlm@well.com>
Cc:        newbies@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: pkg vs ports
Message-ID:  <20020329101023.M24346@ocis.net>
In-Reply-To: <20020329060428.A699@well.com>
References:  <20020329060428.A699@well.com>

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> I'm curious if there's any difference between the 'quality' 
> of the install of a port package or using the pkg_add 
> command?

There shouldn't be.  After all, the packages are built using the ports 
system.  The only real differences would be:
  - packages tend to be build for the lowest common denominator wrt CPU 
architecture and options.  IOW, they're built to run on 386's with the 
default option.
  - ports are optimised for your specific system and allow you to 
fiddle with options and features
  - packages are pre-built so all you do is install it
  - ports must be compiled before they can be installed which can take 
a long time on slow machines (almost 2 days to buildworld on my 486, 
ports tend to take a few hours)

> I've noticed a couple of times that building a program 
> from the ports has crashed my machine, whereas pkg_add 
> seems to go smoothly.

Crash how?  What kind of errors?  Which ports?  Were the ports broken 
or in the midst of being changed?  Not much info here.

Packages *should* work on virtually every machine out there running the 
appropriate version of FreeBSD.  That's the nice thing about them.  The 
ports should also work on virtually avery machine out there, but it 
depends on the version of libraries, compilers, and other build tools 
that you have.

> I've read the paragraph in the handbook and it really 
> doesn't satisfy my curiosity, what do you guys think?

It's a trade-off between customisability and optimisation versus 
ease/speed of installation.  There's no other difference between a port 
and a package.

Freddie
fcash@bigfoot.com

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