ports vs source

[Vulpes Velox]

On Fri, 03 Sep 2004 17:26:11 +0300
Cristi Tauber <cristi.tauber at sbhost.ro> wrote:

>      Hello there,
>   Can anyone tell me which are the avantages of installing from
>   ports
> rather than installing from tar balls ? I am kind of new to BSD, and
> I'm familiar with linux install from tar & stuff. I know to give the
> switches to configure to tune the source for installation ... but
> how i can find the parameters for port install ? I mean ... let's
> say i want to install php and i have to give the path to mysql,
> apache and others graphical libraries ... how can I do that with
> ports ? 

The ability to squeze the absolute max out using /etc/make.conf  is
what I love about ports.

CPUTYPE?=athlon-xp
CFLAGS= -O -m3dnow -msse -mmmx  -pipe
CXXFLAGS+= -fmemoize-lookups -fsave-memoized -m3dnow -msse -mmmx

or something like that ^_^

afaik all packages for 4x defualt to i386 and on 5x i486 so there is
less optimizations... for something there is no noticeable
differneces... for something there are...  my suggestion is to make
sure stuff that eats cpu time is optimized... 

man ports
man make.conf