Debian apt-get / FreeBSD ports

[devnull at plugthebox.net]

Hello,
I come from a Debian background, i normally 'apt-get update' the list of
the packages that apt-get mirrors serve before 'apt-get install'ing any
package. Is there anything like that while using FreeBSD ports? If no,
How does ports know what are the versions of the latest packages?

thanks,
Sincerely,
-- 
devnull at plugthebox.net <devnull at plugthebox.net>