A potential new porter seeking some clarifications

[Lars Engels]

On Thu, Dec 13, 2018 at 10:41:01PM +0800, Arthur Pirika wrote:
> Hi all! I’m hoping to get into porting for FreeBSD, right now just
> focusing on one package, a plugin for bitlbee, however I’d like to
> extend my hand to maintain other ports in the future once I have more
> knowledge and practice with the system. 

Welcome! :-)
> 
> Before I start, though, I just need some clarifications of things from the porter’s handbook. 
> 
> 1. If I understand correctly, the version of the ports tree as fetched
> by portsnap isn’t the best for working on the tree. I should instead
> make another copy of the tree as an svn checkout? Distfiles, however,
> still go to /usr/ports/distfiles

You can change this by setting DISTDIR variable in /etc/make.conf to a
directory you like. See ports(7) manpage.

> 2. Is it absolutely necessary to use poudriere before submitting a
> port? I’m still getting to grips with how it works, and if I need to
> get comfortable with it first, I’ll do so. 

That really depends on the change's size. Trivial patches can often be
sub-/committed without a poudriere run. portlint -ac, make check-plist
and make package can find potential issues for you.
Bigger changes should be build in poudriere. You don't need to attach
the logs to the PR, though.