Obtaining ports collection

Simon Barner barner at in.tum.de
Fri Jun 20 04:11:14 PDT 2003


Hi,

> I have a very slow connection an I want to update the ports collection 
> of my FreeBSD 4.7(i386) Release box. Somehow I have managed to download 
> the collection from the 
> "ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/branches/-current/ports.tar.gz" and 
> I have expanded it into a new "/usr/ports/" directory, renaming my old 
> collection to "/usr/ports.bak/" To you think that this "trick" will 
> actually work, or am I violating some rules?

While this will of course work, there is no need to download the whole
collection via ftp. CVSup might have been a faster alternative:

   http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/cvsup.html

As a supfile, you should use modified copy of
/usr/share/examples/cvsup/ports-supfile

You can als re-use your source tar-balls from you old ports tree (the
are in /usr/ports.bak/distfiles now

More information about the p.c. can be found here:
   
   http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/ports-using.html
   
> Is the ports collection of 
> the "current" branch appropriate for my FreeBSD 4.7 box or not?

Yes, there is only a current branch of the ports collection. While it is
recommended to use a -STABLE box with an up-to-date p.c., most of the
ports should work on your 4.7 box.

Simon


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