Newbie question about pkg_add

[Steven Susbauer]

Jeremy Chadwick wrote:
>On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 11:14:34AM +0800, Canhua wrote:
>>Hi, good day all. I am new to FreeBSD.
>>I tried to pkg_add -r a package (py-networkx), which tell me that:
>>Error: FTP Unable to get ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/
>>FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-7.0-release/Latest/py-networkx.tbz:
>>File unavailable (e.g., file not found, no access)
>>
>>although I know that py-network does exist in /usr/ports.
>>Actually I could go to /usr/ports/math/py-networkx and make install
>>using ports means.
>>
>>Then I could learn from this that there are softwares that could be
>>install from ports while not able to be added from package system?
>>Am I right?
>
>Correct -- not every port has a package.
>
ports-mgmt/portupgrade is a useful tool for easily getting packages and
ports, it includes the tool portinstall which does what it says it does.
By running "portinstall -P pkgname", it will install a port and
dependencies with packages if available, otherwise they are built from
source.

portsman and portmanager are some other frontend tools that can help
with package administration, it's really up to your own tastes.

-Steve