What does it mean to use ports?

[George Hartzell]

hw writes:
 > [...]
 > Thanks!  Somehow I thought this would be a lot easier --- and of course,
 > it isn't.  For now, I'll stick with the binary packages until there's
 > good reason not to.  Anything else is too time consuming because there
 > is so much that I need to figure out first.

You're welcome.  It's not *that* hard (once you uncover the correct
magic) but there's a fair bit of complexity to juggle.  Most of it's
inherent complexity (unavoidable) that comes along with "building
things from the internet" and/but some of it is specific to the
FreeBSD way/history.

It's a good thing to practice on a disposable machine (or in a jail,
or ...) before you use it on anything serious.

g.