Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2002 18:44:14 -0500 From: Brian T.Schellenberger <bts@babbleon.org> To: Peter Leftwich <Hostmaster@Video2Video.Com>, Jonathan Arnold <jdarnold@buddydog.org> Cc: Zach Barnett <zpb@hotmail.com>, FreeBSD Questions <FreeBSD-Questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Packages and Ports Message-ID: <20020329234414.A9CDDBA05@i8k.babbleon.org> In-Reply-To: <20020329181926.B75496-100000@earl-grey.cloud9.net> References: <20020329181926.B75496-100000@earl-grey.cloud9.net>
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On Friday 29 March 2002 06:23 pm, Peter Leftwich wrote: | On Fri, 29 Mar 2002, Jonathan Arnold wrote: | > >I'm new to Freebsd, and I've been trying to learn about packages and | > > ports. | > | > Packages are basically pre-built and nicely packaged ports. They're | > normally a lot easier to install, and much smaller. But, like the kernel, | > it is built for the widest range of computers, and thus may not be tuned | > to your computer. | | Packages are super easy to install, although you kind of have to know what | name they are listed under (you can do this by ftp'ing to the FreeBSD.Org | site and do a directory listing). The simplest method is: | | myprompt$ pkg_add -r pkgname_here | | Remember, these are a cookie-cutter one-size-fits-all mold, so you may wish | to instead manually ftp a package's directory (or tarball which is a *.tgz | or *.tar.gz file) to your box, peruse the contents and check out the | security etc then manually do a "make." Why on earth would you do that?? If you want it built for your box, even if you want to customize it yourself, you might as well start out with port. That'll still get you all the source code and you can still tweak, patch and twiddle to your heart's content--but you get to start out with something you know works (for somebody at least) on FreeBSD. | | > It is also easier to keep up to date with ports, by using cvsup, while it | > does't seem to be as easy to keep up to date with packages. You have a | > lot of packages on your CDROMs, but as I found out in my recent move to | > FreeBSD, no where does it tell you which packages do you have, and on | > what CD are they. | | To find out which packages *are* install already on your box, type: | | myprompt$ pkg_info | more | | To find out which packages are available on the CDROM(s), just mount the cd | drive and cd /-cdrom-mountpoint-/usr/src/...etc | | > -- | > Jonathan Arnold (mailto:jdarnold@buddydog.org) | > Daemon Dancing in the Dark, a FreeBSD weblog: | > http://jdarnold.tzo.com/FreeBSD -- Brian T. Schellenberger . . . . . . . bts@wnt.sas.com (work) Brian, the man from Babble-On . . . . bts@babbleon.org (personal) ME --> http://www.babbleon.org http://www.eff.org <-- GOOD GUYS --> http://www.programming-freedom.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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