*BSD News Article 45751


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From: asami@cs.berkeley.edu (Satoshi ASAMI)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Let's try the ports!
Date: 22 Jun 1995 08:12:35 GMT
Organization: CS Div. - EECS, The University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720
Lines: 54
Message-ID: <ASAMI.95Jun22011235@forgery.cs.berkeley.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: forgery.cs.berkeley.edu

Hello world.  Back from my vacation, and I've seen several posts in
this group asking "has anyone compiled this awesome package that
solves all the differential equations and problems on the world on
FreeBSD?"

Chances are that you can find them easily: as precompiled binary or
easily-compilable source.  They are called "ports", and there are 296
of them as of today.  You can find them in:

ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/packages/ (binary)
ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/    (source)

The above is for FreeBSD-current.  If you want a version for
2.0.5-RELEASE, add "2.0.5-RELEASE/" right after "FreeBSD/" or a
"-2.0.5" at the end (this one is a symlink).

Note: in the above packages/ directory there are only packages for
things that changed (upgrade, etc.) since the release of 2.0.5, so if
you can't find something there, try packages-2.0.5.

The packages are ready to be installed by using pkg_add or pkg_manage.
For the source, the stuff in there are only some support files
(patches and such) and the "real" source will be ftp'd once you type
"make" in that directory.

In fact, the whole ports subtree is so small (about 6MB), you might
just want to grab it today!  Try "get ports.tar.gz" and then "tar xvzf
ports.tar.gz" in your /usr, and you'll get a complete set of latest
ports! :)

Assuming you already have all the stuff, this is what you need to do
if you want emacs:

cd /usr/ports/editors/emacs
make install

It is designed to automatically ftp the source, and then compile &
install emacs and all the necessary tools to support it (only gmake
for emacs, others have longer lists of dependencies).

Can't get any easier than that!  All you need to do is to type "make
clean" in /usr/ports once in a while to avoid it from eating up all
the disks in your system.

There is also a list of all ports in /usr/ports/INDEX.  You can try to
read it yourself (not recommended), or let the computer do the work
for you by typing "cd /usr/ports; make print-index | more". :)

If you have any questions, send them to ports@freebsd.org.
Suggestions, submissions of new ports, etc., also to the same address.

Enjoy!

Satoshi (your friendly ports administrator)