What does it mean to use ports?

[hw]

Robert Huff <roberthuff at rcn.com> writes:

> Polytropon writes:
>
>>  > Can I globally set compile options like -march=native (or 
>>  > whatever the equivalent for FreeBSD is)?
>>  
>>  The file /etc/make.conf can be used for that. See "man 5 make.conf"
>>  for details.
>
> 	Verbum sapienti: be careful when you do this.  The settings in
> make.conf are used for _every_ compilation on the system - ports
> ... and world ... and the kernel,

Thanks for the warning --- Gentoo has something like that, too.

Wouldn't I want everything to be optimized for the CPU it's running on?

> 	I am still trying to find an exposition of the logic that
> prevents a "/etc/ports.conf" as a sibling to "/etc/src.conf" and
> make.conf. 

Perhaps it's not about logic.  Having multiple global compile options
overriding local ones on the same machine could entirely defeat the
seamlessness of ports.  That's assuming that there is such a
seamlessness ...