The FreeBSD Ports and Packages Collection offers a simple way for users and administrators to install applications. There are currently &ports.count; ports available.
The Ports Collection supports the latest release on the FreeBSD-CURRENT and FreeBSD-STABLE branches. Older releases are not supported and may or may not work correctly with an up-to-date ports collection. Over time, changes to the ports collection may rely on features that are not present in older releases. Wherever convenient, we try not to gratuitously break support for recent releases, but it is sometimes unavoidable. When this occurs, patches contributed by the user community to maintain support for older releases will usually be committed.
Each port
listed here
contains any patches necessary to make the original application source
code compile and run on FreeBSD. Installing an application is as
simple as typing
-make
+make
install
in the port directory. If you
download the framework for the entire list of ports by installing the
ports hierarchy, you can have
thousands of applications right at your fingertips.
Each port's Makefile automatically fetches the application source code, either from a local disk, CD-ROM or via -ftp, +ftp, unpacks it on your system, applies the patches, and compiles. If all went well, a simple make install will install the application and register it with the package system.
For most ports, a precompiled package also exists, saving -the user the work of having to compile anything at all. Each port -contains a link to its corresponding package and you may either simply -download that file and then run the -pkg_add -command -on it or you can simply grab the link location and hand it straight -to pkg_add since it is capable of accepting FTP URLs as -well as filenames.
+the user the work and time of having to compile anything at all. Use +pkg +install to securely download and install the precompiled +version of a port. For more information see Using +pkg for Binary Package Management Index: head/en_US.ISO8859-1/htdocs/ports/references.xml =================================================================== --- head/en_US.ISO8859-1/htdocs/ports/references.xml (revision 45557) +++ head/en_US.ISO8859-1/htdocs/ports/references.xml (revision 45558) @@ -1,93 +1,89 @@ %ports.ent; %statistics.ent; ]>To start learning more about ports and packages, see Installing Applications: Packages and Ports, a section of the FreeBSD Handbook.
The Porter's Handbook is the master reference for both creating new ports and maintaining existing ports, including a section on Keeping Up. It also contains more detail about the topics below, as well as more references for further study.
You may also find the following to be useful: