How The FreeBSD Ports Collection Works

by Mark Linimon

Abstract

This talk will focus less on the technical aspect of how applications are brought into the FreeBSD ports infrastructure, and more on the non-technical aspects. Topics to be covered include: how new ports are created; how ports are submitted; the procedures for handling Problem Reports about new ports; maintainance of ports; build failures and Problem Reports; notification of port updates; procedures to mark ports "broken"; and procedures to mark ports that have reached their end-of-life. In addition, the procedures for people to contribute to the Ports Collection, both as maintainers and committers (those with CVS commit access), will be discussed.

Author bio

Mark Linimon is a computer consultant with many years of experience in both Unix-like and embedded systems. He has experience in C, Java, Python, and SQL. Since 2003 he has worked on FreeBSD, first as a committer, and then as a member of the Ports Management Team (portmgr) and the Problem Report Database management team. He is the author and maintainer of the FreeBSD Ports Management System (portsmon), an application that correlates the package building error logs, problem reports, and repository checkin information. In real life he is owned by a Maine Coon Cat called Magic.

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