Ports collection
Ports collections (or ports trees, or just ports) are the sets of
The main advantage of the ports system when compared with a binary distribution model is that the installation can be tuned and optimized according to available resources. For example, the system administrator can easily install a 32 bit version of a package if the 64 bit version is not available or is not optimized for that machine. Conversely, the main disadvantage is compilation time, which can be significant. For example, a full installation of a FreeBSD system, using ports, can take several days, depending on the hardware.
FreeBSD Ports
Jordan Hubbard committed his port make macros to the FreeBSD CVS repository on August 21, 1994.[1] His package install suite Makefile had been committed a year earlier (August 26, 1993).[2] The core ports framework was at first maintained by Hubbard along with Satoshi Asami for several years. The Ports Management Team was later formed to handle this task.
NetBSD's pkgsrc
NetBSD's pkgsrc ports collection is distinctive in that it aims to be portable and is usable on a number of operating systems aside from NetBSD itself, including the other BSDs,
OpenBSD ports
In contrast to
In late October 2007, OpenBSD developer Nikolay Sturm announced that -stable ports tree should be considered unmaintained due to the lack of resources. This effectively forced users to run -current ports/base tree in order to keep up with security updates. In 2009, it was decided to revive the -stable ports tree under supervision of Robert Nagy and Jasper Lievisse Adriaanse.[8]
There are three unofficial web sites with a listing of OpenBSD ports and packages:
- OpenPorts.se, originally announced as ports.openbsd.nu in 2006,[9] was a custom-written web-site that does its own parsing of the ports tree structure and the updates, and has the functionality of tracking changes of a given port, having a shortcoming of not supporting some of the more complicated Makefile logic, and thus missing some 15% of packages that require the intricate knowledge of the ports tree structure and the use of the official tools.[10] The project was discontinued in January 2023.[11]
- ports.su, announced in February 2013 and is based on the official sqlports database,[12] thus having a complete collection of all the packages and flavours that are available for the amd64 platform. Being based on the official tools, the "virtual" (non-primary) categories are readily available, and so is the information about the library, build and run-time dependencies. The source of the web-site is heavily based on the ports-readmes port, and is readily available in GitHub. The project is no longer updated since November 2018.
See also
- Android Runtime which does ahead-of-time compilation at installation
- MacPorts, used in macOS. The name and design is based on the ports system
- Portage (software), used in Gentoo Linux and inspired by the ports system
References
- ^ "CVS log for ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk". FreeBSD project. Archived from the original on 2013-04-15. Retrieved 2018-05-26.
- ^ "CVS log for src/usr.sbin/pkg_install/Makefile". FreeBSD project. Archived from the original on 2013-04-14.
- ^ "Joyent Packages Documentation - Install On macOS". Joyent. Archived from the original on 2018-10-06. Retrieved 2018-10-10.
- ^ "Joyent Packages Documentation - Install On Linux". Joyent. Archived from the original on 2018-10-06. Retrieved 2018-10-10.
- ^ Dillon, Matthew. "PKGSRC will be officially supported as of the next release". Archived from the original on 2015-09-09. Retrieved 2008-01-23.
- ^ Sherrill, Justin. "DragonFly 3.4 release planning". Archived from the original on 2016-03-10. Retrieved 2016-05-05.
- ^ "GitHub - DragonFlyBSD/DPorts: The dedicated application build system for DragonFly BSD". GitHub. Archived from the original on 2018-06-11. Retrieved 2014-07-08.
- ^ Yodlowsky, William. "4.6-stable ports". Archived from the original on 2011-06-12. Retrieved 2009-12-29.
- ^ "ports.openbsd.nu - frontend to ports". OpenBSD Journal. 2006-08-09. Archived from the original on 2018-05-27. Retrieved 2018-05-26.
- ^ Espie, Marc (2013-06-07). "Re: Why is there no pkg_find(1)?". [email protected]. Archived from the original on 2022-04-10. Retrieved 2018-05-26.
- ^ "Time to say goodbye". 2023-01-30. Retrieved 2023-11-02.
- ^ "Introducing ports.su — ports-readmes mirror and ports search". OpenBSD Journal. 2013-05-02. Archived from the original on 2018-05-27. Retrieved 2018-05-26.