Note: The ports system makes it easy for you to compile applications for your OpenBSD system. For pre-compiled versions of several popular applications see README.packages. The ports/ subdirectory is a checkout of the OpenBSD ports tree. Read http://www.openbsd.org/ports.html if you know nothing about ports at this point. This text is not a manual of how to use ports. Rather, it is a set of notes meant to kickstart the user on the OpenBSD ports system. Certainly, the OpenBSD ports system is not complete. This is because the full integration of ports into the OpenBSD environment is a very young project as of this release. We believe the ports that are provided here are stable, but it is most important to realize that ports will continue to grow a great deal in functionallity in the future. There are two components to the ports system. The first component is the Makefile, patches, and informational files used to automate the generation of third-party software. This is found under the ports/ directory. The second component are the third-party distribution files. These files, typically compressed tar files, are found in the distfiles/ directory. The ports/ hierarchy, or at least individual ports from within the hierarchy, must be copied from the CD-ROM to your hard disk. Another option is to mount the CD-ROM as the lower layer of a union mount. This is necessary as the build processs uses the ports directory for working files. Caution: some ports require over 50 Megabytes of disk space to build the application. To copy out the contents of the ports tree to /usr/ports (where it is normally located) you would mount the CD-ROM with ports on it on /cdrom and issue a command like: # cp -pR /cdrom/ports/* /usr/ports/ Or, you could mount the CD-ROM ports tree in a union under /usr/ports like so: # mount -t union -o -b /cdrom /usr/ports As we said, ports will be growing a lot in the future. The ports/ directory represents a CVS (see the manpage for cvs(1) if you aren't familiar with CVS) checkout of our ports. As with our complete source tree, we will soon be making ports available via anoncvs. So, in order to keep current with the, you must make the ports/ tree available on a read-write medium and update the tree with a command like: # cd [portsdir]/; cvs -d anoncvsserver.openbsd.org:/cvs update -PAd [Of course, you must replace the local directory and server name here with the location of your ports collection and a nerby anoncvs server.] Again, it's important to see the webpage for specific instructions as this is a very new service which hasn't yet been ironed out completely. Finally, despite ports' youth, help is never far. If you're interested in seeing a port added, would like to help out, or just would like to know more, the mailing list ports@openbsd.org is a good place to know.