FreeBSD Ports Tricks

BSD Forums writes "One of FreeBSD's biggest benefits is its ports collection. You can go years without learning more than just make install clean, but there are dozens of features built into the ports tools. OnLamp's Dru Lavigne demonstrates several of these tricks to simplify your life."

Comments

Gee golly!

[cliffy2000]

It's a good thing that SCO isn't claiming ownership to ALL Unix variants... otherwise they'd have to call it 699DollarsBSD!

Re:Gee golly!

[hackrobat]

Ha ha! Reminds me of Linus' post in 1993, asked why Linux should be chosen over BSD:

> Other than the fact Linux has a cool name, could someone explain why I
> should use Linux over BSD?

No. That's it. The cool name, that is. We worked very hard on
creating a name that would appeal to the majority of people, and it
certainly paid off: thousands of people are using linux just to be able
to say "OS/2? Hah. I've got Linux. What a cool name". 386BSD made the
mistake of putting a lot of numbers and weird abbreviations into the
name, and is scaring away a lot of people just because it sounds too
technical.

The feature I like most:

[Krapangor]

Zombiefication

You just type e.g.:
goat@blindeyes> make emacs --D UNDEAD=1
And your installation of emacs is zombiefied. That means that an emacs process can never crash, is much stronger albeit slower and can only be killed by kill PID -SIGCUTINTOHALFWITHCHAINSAW.
In fact I have a zombiefied apache running here for 742 days without any trouble. Although it eats sometimes other processes.

So all you "*BSD is dead whiners": In fact the death of *BSD is a good thing. It has given the system many new occult powers of which a living system like Linux/MacOS X can only dream. With all these undead processes, vampiric servers and banshee IDS your system is much better than the boring old standard rubbish.
I even heard some rumors from Redmond that MS is working on killing Windows, too. Just for gaining the great powers of an undead system.

Re:The feature I like most:

[FrostedWheat]

You know what, FrostedWheat? *BSD is dying.

I use dead OS's. All the time. They don't know there dead.

Zealotry

[Ari Rahikkala]

[to save Slashdot users' bandwidth, a reply about how Gentoo GNU/Linux does most of this stuff, too, and some of it (like making package repositories) in an easier way has been deleted from this space]

No Gentoo!

[The Original Yama]

Let's keep this thread Gentoo-free, shall we?

[note: I actually use Gentoo, but Gentoo fanboys usually get on my nerves]

another one..

[swimmar132]

Another trick that I always liked is (and isn't listed in the article) is

$ make install

Re:Useful

[vrt3]

I would hope they are in the handbook, because without these 'tricks' I think the ports system would be a pretty dumb package management system.

Zealotry? You asked for it!

[Stephen VanDahm]

"[to save Slashdot users' bandwidth, a reply about how Gentoo GNU/Linux does most of this stuff, too, and some of it (like making package repositories) in an easier way has been deleted from this space]"

I know that you're making fun of Gentoo zealots, but in the process, you're in danger of awaking a sleeping giant: The BSD Snob. Because you didn't think before posting, innocent Slashdot readers will be forced to read how the BSDs are better designed, more carefully developed, and are more portable across different platforms. Readers will even be forced to endure accusations that, being Linux users, they wet the bed. Gentoo certainly has its zealots, but BSD users have been looking down their noses at AT&T UNIX since, like, the 1970s. They're the original OS zealots!

See, you've unleashed an Army of Darkness upon us all. Where's Bruce Campbell when you need him?

Steve
Linux and BSD User

Re:My beef with FreeBSDs port system..

[the uNF cola]

Dying? I hope it isn't doing T-shirts. Tie-dye is so lame.

Re:Envy

[lahi]

While you are probably right, you could have used fewer words:
"netbsd works fine".

-Lasse
(Running NetBSD on my PCs, my good old MacIIci, and my iMac DV Special Edition)