How to know which version of an apps available in various FreeBSD release?

[Emanuel Haupt]

On Thu, 3 Jun 2010 04:20:51 +1000
Tao Wang <dancefire at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 7:09 PM, Emanuel Haupt <ehaupt at freebsd.org> wrote:
> 
> > Tao Wang <dancefire at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > I'm doing a survey about the availablilty of some packages in
> > > different platform, including FreeBSD release. I want to know whether
> > > the package is existed in the specific FreeBSD release, and which
> > > version it is? I found: http://www.freebsd.org/ports/ , however, it
> > > is only against -STABLE or -CURRENT. I also need to know the
> > > information on previous release. How to do it? Thanks.
> >
> > All the information you need is available in INDEX:
> >
> > http://www.FreeBSD.org/ports/INDEX-8.bz2
> >
> > Emanuel
> >
> >
> >
> I'm not quite sure, does that file only contain the package version info for
> FreeBSD release 8? or it also contains the version info for other releases?
> 
> I also need the package availability information on previous release, such
> as, what the version of package 'A' on FreeBSD 6.2 and FreeBSD 7.0. So, the
> linked file seems only contains information for FreeBSD 8.0, am I wrong?

There is one for each major version:

http://www.FreeBSD.org/ports/INDEX-5.bz2
http://www.FreeBSD.org/ports/INDEX-6.bz2
http://www.FreeBSD.org/ports/INDEX-7.bz2
http://www.FreeBSD.org/ports/INDEX-8.bz2
http://www.FreeBSD.org/ports/INDEX-9.bz2

Although it's always just the HEAD version. As others already pointed
out, if you want the package list for a specific release you could
checkout the ports tree from a release tag and build INDEX yourself.

Emanuel