Question about ports builds

[Chuck Swiger]

Charlie Sorsby wrote:
> When one builds (or attempts to build) a port, does the Makefile
> know about dependencies and, if necessary, fetch and build any 
> that are needed but not found?

Yes and yes.

[ ... ]
> PS It would be really helpful if each port/package at freebsd.org
> had an indication whether it requires the latest and greatest
> version of freeBSD.  Put another way, it would be nice to know the
> oldest version of freeBSD it will work with.  Perhaps that could be
> included in the "Requires" list on the page for the port/package.

The people maintaining the ports attempt to support them on all of the active 
versions of FreeBSD, which means 4.10 or 4.11, 5.3 and later, 6.0 and later, 
and -CURRENT (what will become 7.0).  Support for 4.x is going away soon, 
however, and it will become more common for new ports to not work on 4.x as 
time passes.

For those ports that do not work with an older version like 4.x because of 
features added to more recent versions of the operating system, ports usually 
will indicate this in the Makefile.

-- 
-Chuck