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FreeBSD Handbook
Prev Chapter 4 Installing Applications: Packages and Ports Next

4.2 Overview of Software Installation

If you have used a UNIX® system before you will know that the typical procedure for installing third party software goes something like this:

  1. Download the software, which might be distributed in source code format, or as a binary.

  2. Unpack the software from its distribution format (typically a tarball compressed with compress(1), gzip(1), or bzip2(1)).

  3. Locate the documentation (perhaps an INSTALL or README file, or some files in a doc/ subdirectory) and read up on how to install the software.

  4. If the software was distributed in source format, compile it. This may involve editing a Makefile, or running a configure script, and other work.

  5. Test and install the software.

And that is only if everything goes well. If you are installing a software package that was not deliberately ported to FreeBSD you may even have to go in and edit the code to make it work properly.

Should you want to, you can continue to install software the ``traditional'' way with FreeBSD. However, FreeBSD provides two technologies which can save you a lot of effort: packages and ports. At the time of writing, over 9,200 third party applications have been made available in this way.

For any given application, the FreeBSD package for that application is a single file which you must download. The package contains pre-compiled copies of all the commands for the application, as well as any configuration files or documentation. A downloaded package file can be manipulated with FreeBSD package management commands, such as pkg_add(1), pkg_delete(1), pkg_info(1), and so on. Installing a new application can be carried out with a single command.

A FreeBSD port for an application is a collection of files designed to automate the process of compiling an application from source code.

Remember that there are a number of steps you would normally carry out if you compiled a program yourself (downloading, unpacking, patching, compiling, installing). The files that make up a port contain all the necessary information to allow the system to do this for you. You run a handful of simple commands and the source code for the application is automatically downloaded, extracted, patched, compiled, and installed for you.

In fact, the ports system can also be used to generate packages which can later be manipulated with pkg_add and the other package management commands that will be introduced shortly.

Both packages and ports understand dependencies. Suppose you want to install an application that depends on a specific library being installed. Both the application and the library have been made available as FreeBSD ports and packages. If you use the pkg_add command or the ports system to add the application, both will notice that the library has not been installed, and automatically install the library first.

Given that the two technologies are quite similar, you might be wondering why FreeBSD bothers with both. Packages and ports both have their own strengths, and which one you use will depend on your own preference.

Package Benefits

  • A compressed package tarball is typically smaller than the compressed tarball containing the source code for the application.

  • Packages do not require any additional compilation. For large applications, such as Mozilla, KDE, or GNOME this can be important, particularly if you are on a slow system.

  • Packages do not require any understanding of the process involved in compiling software on FreeBSD.

Ports Benefits

  • Packages are normally compiled with conservative options, because they have to run on the maximum number of systems. By installing from the port, you can tweak the compilation options to (for example) generate code that is specific to a Pentium IV or Athlon processor.

  • Some applications have compile time options relating to what they can and cannot do. For example, Apache can be configured with a wide variety of different built-in options. By building from the port you do not have to accept the default options, and can set them yourself.

    In some cases, multiple packages will exist for the same application to specify certain settings. For example, Ghostscript is available as a ghostscript package and a ghostscript-nox11 package, depending on whether or not you have installed an X11 server. This sort of rough tweaking is possible with packages, but rapidly becomes impossible if an application has more than one or two different compile time options.

  • The licensing conditions of some software distributions forbid binary distribution. They must be distributed as source code.

  • Some people do not trust binary distributions. At least with source code, you can (in theory) read through it and look for potential problems yourself.

  • If you have local patches, you will need the source in order to apply them.

  • Some people like having code around, so they can read it if they get bored, hack it, borrow from it (license permitting, of course), and so on.

To keep track of updated ports, subscribe to the FreeBSD ports mailing list and the FreeBSD ports bugs mailing list.

The remainder of this chapter will explain how to use packages and ports to install and manage third party software on FreeBSD.

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This, and other documents, can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/doc/.

For questions about FreeBSD, read the documentation before contacting <questions@FreeBSD.org>.
For questions about this documentation, e-mail <doc@FreeBSD.org>.
FreeBSD Handbook
FreeBSD Handbook
The FreeBSD Documentation Project
Copyright © 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2007, 2006, 2007 The FreeBSD Documentation Project

Redistribution and use in source (SGML DocBook) and 'compiled' forms (SGML, HTML, PDF, PostScript, RTF and so forth) with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

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FreeBSD is a registered trademark of Wind River Systems, Inc. This is expected to change soon.

3Com and HomeConnect are registered trademarks of 3Com Corporation.

3ware and Escalade are registered trademarks of 3ware Inc.

ARM is a registered trademark of ARM Limited.

Adaptec is a registered trademark of Adaptec, Inc.

Adobe, Acrobat, Acrobat Reader, and PostScript are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries.

Apple, FireWire, Mac, Macintosh, Mac OS, Quicktime, and TrueType are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc., registered in the United States and other countries.

Corel and WordPerfect are trademarks or registered trademarks of Corel Corporation and/or its subsidiaries in Canada, the United States and/or other countries.

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Heidelberg, Helvetica, Palatino, and Times Roman are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG in the U.S. and other countries.

IBM, AIX, EtherJet, Netfinity, OS/2, PowerPC, PS/2, S/390, and ThinkPad are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both.

IEEE, POSIX, and 802 are registered trademarks of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. in the United States.

Intel, Celeron, EtherExpress, i386, i486, Itanium, Pentium, and Xeon are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries.

Intuit and Quicken are registered trademarks and/or registered service marks of Intuit Inc., or one of its subsidiaries, in the United States and other countries.

Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the United States.

LSI Logic, AcceleRAID, eXtremeRAID, MegaRAID and Mylex are trademarks or registered trademarks of LSI Logic Corp.

M-Systems and DiskOnChip are trademarks or registered trademarks of M-Systems Flash Disk Pioneers, Ltd.

Macromedia, Flash, and Shockwave are trademarks or registered trademarks of Macromedia, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries.

Microsoft, FrontPage, MS-DOS, Outlook, Windows, Windows Media, and Windows NT are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.

Netscape and the Netscape Navigator are registered trademarks of Netscape Communications Corporation in the U.S. and other countries.

Motif, OSF/1, and UNIX are registered trademarks and IT DialTone and The Open Group are trademarks of The Open Group in the United States and other countries.

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PowerQuest and PartitionMagic are registered trademarks of PowerQuest Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.

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Symantec and Ghost are registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation in the United States and other countries.

MATLAB is a registered trademark of The MathWorks, Inc.

SpeedTouch is a trademark of Thomson

U.S. Robotics and Sportster are registered trademarks of U.S. Robotics Corporation.

VMware is a trademark of VMware, Inc.

Waterloo Maple and Maple are trademarks or registered trademarks of Waterloo Maple Inc.

Mathematica is a registered trademark of Wolfram Research, Inc.

XFree86 is a trademark of The XFree86 Project, Inc.

Ogg Vorbis and Xiph.Org are trademarks of Xiph.Org.

Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this document, and the FreeBSD Project was aware of the trademark claim, the designations have been followed by the ``™'' or the ``®'' symbol.

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This, and other documents, can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/doc/.

For questions about FreeBSD, read the documentation before contacting <questions@FreeBSD.org>.
For questions about this documentation, e-mail <doc@FreeBSD.org>.

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