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FreeBSD Ports Tricks

Posted by michael on from the sit-up-and-beg dept.

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."

3 of 201 comments (clear)

  1. Re:yes by m0rten · · Score: 5, Informative
    Guys, what happens if I remove a piece of software after it's been installed and lots of other software depends on it. Will "Ports" warn me about what will break, or will it just go ahead and do it, and leave me scratching my head trying to figure out what happened?
    It will warn you that there are other ports depending on this port. However you can forcefully remove it if you wish (and then you're on your own..)
  2. Re:BSD is Dying by SiliconJesus101 · · Score: 5, Informative
    Well, actually it can in fact run quite a few Linux applications. A friend of mine (ack, how cliche') has a Quake III Arena server running on his BSD box and as far as I know most Linux ELF binaries can be coaxed to run on BSD without too much of a hassle (again from what my friend says).

    From http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/h andbook/linuxemu.html , actually it can in fact run quite a few Linux applications.

    "In a nutshell, the compatibility allows FreeBSD users to run about 90% of all Linux applications without modification. This includes applications such as Star Office, the Linux version of Netscape, Adobe Acrobat, RealPlayer 5 and 7, VMWare, Oracle, WordPerfect, Doom, Quake, and more. It is also reported that in some situations, Linux binaries perform better on FreeBSD than they do under Linux." "In a nutshell, the compatibility allows FreeBSD users to run about 90% of all Linux applications without modification. This includes applications such as Star Office, the Linux version of Netscape, Adobe Acrobat, RealPlayer 5 and 7, VMWare, Oracle, WordPerfect, Doom, Quake, and more. It is also reported that in some situations, Linux binaries perform better on FreeBSD than they do under Linux."

    --

    "The strong will do what they want, the weak will do what they must."
    -Thucydides

  3. I'm surprised no one has mentioned portupgrade... by Edward+Scissorhands · · Score: 5, Informative

    There's a great utility in the ports tree called portupgrade. It's very handy and allows for quick and easy upgrading of your ports.

    It lives in /usr/ports/sysutils/portupgrade

    Check it out. Start with the manual page (man portupgrade) after you install it, then use Google for more info. It's well worth it.