Pain finding packages

[Kurt Buff]

On Sat, Jan 30, 2010 at 10:48, Joe Springer <joespr at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hi.
>
> I am very new to FreeBSD with several years of Linux experience. After installed FreeSDB for the first time, I wanted to install some packages. For example, samba.
>
> I found that
>
>   pkg_add -r samba
>
> fails. I need to know specifically the samba version to install it.
>
> To install, I needed do this:
>   pkg_add -r samba3
>
> This is difficult. Do I need to look up every package in advance on your website to understand what version I need to install?
>
> Isn't there a way to specify "Install the latest version of some package that is appropriate to the version of my installed FreeBSD"?
>
> Thanks,
> Joe

Not really.

However, you should have installed a copy of the ports tree during the
creation of your machine.

Here are your tools: csup (or portsnap, either of which will keep your
ports tree current), portupgrade (or portmaster or one of a couple of
others, to upgrade your current ports) and make. csup is native, and
portupgrade seems to be more commonly used than the others of its
kind.

For make, do the following, after csup (or an alternative):

     cd /usr/ports
     make search name=samba | less
or
     cd /usr/ports
     make search key=samba | less

Then browse that list to see what most particularly applies to your needs.


HTH,

Kurt