When do binaries get removed?

[Alejandro Imass]

On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 9:03 PM, Michael D. Norwick
<mnorwick at centurytel.net> wrote:
> Good evening;
>
> I am using;
> $uname -r
> $8.0-RELEASE
> under Sun VirtualBox 3.1.6.
>
> I am a long time Debian GNU/Linux user who has just installed the above
> release.  I have installed and used FreeBSD in years past but that was
> around the 5.x-RELEASE.  I have had a time installing applications from the
> ports tree (a story for another day) and finally resorted to installing
> binaries from the install dvd to get the full working X distribution.  I
> wanted to start with the 'minimal' set of packages and build from there.  At
> the moment I have the distributed binaries installed and am
> compiling/installing gcc 4.4 and friends.
> I have the current FreeBSD handbook but it does not seem to have the answer
> to the following question.
> When building and installing an application from ports, how does the
> original binary or script, in /usr/bin, /usr/lib, /usr/etc..., from the
> distribution, get removed?  The make install foo command does not appear to
> symlink the original application location to the new one in
> /usr/local/whatever.  Does it even matter?
>


Hi Michael,

I too come the Debian world, so here are some bullets that I've picked
up along the way:

1) FBSD make a clean separation of 'base' from everything else. I
personally think this is one of the greatest strengths of FBSD. You
may have or need stuff from the ports that's already in the base but
it doesn't matter, you can can have both versions. The base is /bin
/usr/bin /lib /usr/lib, etc. and _everything else_ is /usr/local -
when you upgrade the system this will make _a lot_ of sense.

2) There are certain things in base like sendmail for example that
should not be deinstalled just de-activated via conf, other include
bind, gcc, and several other things. There are many simple how-to's
into installing things that 'compete' with base, at least for the more
common things.

3) You can install binary packages or compile from the ports
collection. Large bulky packages like Xorg, Gnome, KDE, OpenOffice are
probably better installed from pre-compiled binaries with pkg_add,
much the same way as aptitude in Debian. Besides, there is little
customization and compiling options that are useful. But if you are
installing Apache for example, it makes sense to install from the
ports collection because you will get the chance to choose very
specific compile time options and the binary will be optimized for
your specific hardware. It doesn't matter if you install from ports or
binaries, the package registration is common, so if you add with
pckg_add you can remov from the ports directory and vice-versa.


Best,
Alejandro Imass


> Thank You,
> Michael D. Norwick
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