FreeBSD6 Unleashed

Updating and Maintaining Your Ports

Software changes—and in the open-source community, it changes all the time. There are nearly 14,000 ports in the collection, and each one of them is undergoing development (some at much faster rates than others). A fact of system administration is that you can’t install or upgrade software fast enough to keep up with the rate of development. The best you can hope to do is keep your ports collection up to date and use the built-in tools, such as pkg_version, to keep track of what needs to be upgraded.

Tip

If you regularly build software from the ports, you should be in the habit of reading the regularly updated /usr/ports/UPDATING file and skimming it for changes to ports that pertain to you. Pay special attention ...