Ports/Packages and release engineering

[Warren Block]

On Sat, 14 Feb 2015, John Goerzen wrote:

> I actually expect to use pkg(8) rather than ports almost all of the time.
> So it sounds nice that pkg(8) can do this, but I am confused about the
> relation between ports and pkg.

Building a port produces a package, or prebuilt binary packages can be 
automatically downloaded and installed.  The pkg system handles and 
tracks this.

> I see some rather contradictory information out there, and wonder if 
> this changed in FreeBSD 9 or 10?  I see some people saying that a 
> person always needs to tell the ports system to register with pkg, but 
> then I don't see anything in the Handbook saying to do that these 
> days.

This might help:
http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/pkg.html