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OpenBSD Porter's Handbook

The OpenBSD Porter's Handbook is supplemental documentation to the man pages, which are available online.

1 - The OpenBSD Ports System

• 1.1 - How does it work?
• 1.2 - Fetching the ports tree
• 1.3 - Configuration of the ports system
• 1.4 - Searching the ports tree
• 1.5 - A first example
• 1.6 - Cleaning up after a build
• 1.7 - Uninstalling a port's package
• 1.8 - Using flavors and subpackages
• 1.9 - Problems and Contacts
• 1.10 - When a Port Is Lagging Behind the Mainstream Version

2 - OpenBSD Porting Guide

• 2.1 - Overview
• 2.2 - Porting Checklist
• 2.3 - Handling Complex Situations
  • 2.3.1 - Know the software
  • 2.3.2 - Figure out important options
  • 2.3.3 - The ideal case: MULTI_PACKAGES and PSEUDO_FLAVORS
  • 2.3.4 - Interdependencies between subpackages
  • 2.3.5 - True FLAVORS, and PKGNAMES
• 2.4 - Updating ports
  • 2.4.1 - Update checklist
• 2.5 - OpenBSD Porting Policy
• 2.6 - Security Recommendations
• 2.7 - Generic Porting Hints
• 2.8 - Other Helpful Hints
• 2.9 - Additional Information

3 - Special Porting Topics

• 3.1 - Shared Libraries
• 3.2 - GNU autoconf
• 3.3 - Configuration Files
• 3.4 - Audio Applications

4 - Port Testing Guide

• 4.1 - Introduction
• 4.2 - How
• 4.3 - First step
• 4.4 - Testing
• 4.5 - Commenting
• 4.6 - More testing

5 - Differences from other BSD projects

• 5.1 - Important differences from other BSD projects
• 5.2 - Extra Support
• 5.3 - Generic infrastructure issues
• 5.4 - Using make properly
• 5.5 - Fetching sources
• 5.6 - The WRKDIR infrastructure
• 5.7 - Fake port installation
  • 5.7.1 - Introduction
  • 5.7.2 - Advantages
  • 5.7.3 - How to do it
  • 5.7.4 - Pitfalls
• 5.8 - Packaging tools
• 5.9 - Flavors

The base OpenBSD operating system is fairly complete in its own right. However there is a fair amount of third party software one might want to use in addition to the base system. Typically, users would use pre-compiled binary packages to add such functionality. But in order to create these binary packages in the first place, OpenBSD uses the ports tree.

In this handbook, we will explain how the ports tree works, when you should use it and how to maintain it.

NOTE: The ports & packages collection does NOT go through the thorough security audit that the OpenBSD base system does. Although we strive to keep the quality of the packages collection high, we just do not have enough human resources to ensure the same level of robustness and security as in the base OS.

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