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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!bunyip.cc.uq.oz.au!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!violet.berkeley.edu!jkh From: jkh@violet.berkeley.edu (Jordan K. Hubbard) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.development Subject: Re: .../ports and ported software. Date: 14 Sep 1994 15:47:47 GMT Organization: University of California, Berkeley Lines: 29 Message-ID: <3575v3$nkk@agate.berkeley.edu> References: <356v48$8ut@shore.shore.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: violet.berkeley.edu In article <356v48$8ut@shore.shore.net>, Robert Withrow <witr@rwwa.com> wrote: >Could you place in some obvious place (say .../ports/.../diffs/) a set of >xxx:yyy.diff.gz files that are produced by CVS ``rdiff'' that will take >a release version of some software package (xxx) and port it to some >version of freeBSD (yyy)? Well, it doesn't quite work like that, but it's close, and I'd invite anyone wishing to see HOW we did it to look into: freebsd.cdrom.com:~ftp/pub/FreeBSD/FreeBSD-current/ports Rather than making a central repository of diffs, what I did instead was to make each port an encapsulation of the procedure required to make it run under FreeBSD. Sometimes this is confined to patches, sometimes this requires that more intelligent scripts run over it at various times in the build process. Sometimes it even requires that the port open a connection to france to grab some essential piece, but all of these circumstances are fairly well catered for. In most cases, the "port" is little more than a Makefile. >((And, I would hope, the need for ports should slowly subside as the >software writers include the diffs into their source...)) Well, there will *always* be a need for ports since even in their simplest "one Makefile" form, the ports show users what's out there and catagorize the various packages available. Also, on the CD dists, you need to have a fairly complete collection anyway. Jordan