General issues with the ports system

[Konstantin 'Kosta' Welke]

On Mon, 5 Jul 2004 19:20:21 -0700, Roop Nanuwa <roop.nanuwa at gmail.com>  
wrote:

>> b) Is it possible to use & install ports without having a ports tree?

> You will need the ports-base in addition to the directory for the port
> itself to compile any ports yourself.

Yeah, that seems pretty logical.

> Also, realize that most ports
> have dependencies that will need to be satisfied if you wish to
> compile them. Those will also have to be present.

Sure. I guess the main problem with the "use cvs to get only the
portsdir you want" problem is that *IF* there is an unsatisfied
dependency, it can't `cd` to the right directory. This is the
tricky part :) Maybe its covered in 'BSD Hacks'...

> If you want to trim down the unnecessary parts of the ports
> tree, look into using the 'refuse' file in the cvsup man page. I'd
> say that's a much better way to go about it.

Sure. And the portsclean utility is pretty nice, too. Much much
better than `cd /usr/ports && make clean`...

Still, my /usr/ports about 260 megs (without distfiles), which should
be okay for just about any computer these days :)

cya,
Kosta