Hitchhiker's Guide to Openbsd

current ports tree. Yes, this really does mean a wonderful new port will typically not work on 
your "older" system -- even if that system was -current just a few weeks ago. Keep in mind that if 
you use X11 as part of your system, it must also follow the corresponding branch! 
●
Because no intrusive changes are made in -stable, it is possible to use a -stable ports tree on a -
release system, and vice versa. There is no need to update all your installed packages after 
applying a few errata patches to your system. 
Another common failure is a missing X11 installation. Even if the port you try to build has no direct 
dependency on X11, a subpackage of it or its dependencies may require X11 headers and libraries. 
Building ports on systems without X11 is not supported, so if you insist on doing so, you are on your 
own to figure it out. For many ports, there are, however, "no_x11" flavored packages available, which 
you can install without needing X11 on your system. 
15.4.2 - The latest version of my Top-Favorite-Software is not available!
If you are using a release or stable version of OpenBSD, you will not find any package updates until the 
next release, or until security issues occur which justify an update of the port in the -stable branch, and 
of the corresponding package. 
WARNING: DO NOT mix versions of Ports and OpenBSD! 
Doing so will sooner or later (probably very soon, in fact) cause you headaches trying to solve 
all kinds 
of errors
! 
But hey, I am all -current here! 
The ports collection is a volunteer project. Sometimes the project simply doesn't have the developer 
resources to keep everything up-to-date. Developers pretty much pick up what they consider interesting 
http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq15.html (22 of 27)9/4/2011 10:02:29 AM

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15 - The OpenBSD packages and ports system
and can test in their environment. Some individual ports may lag behind the mainstream versions 
because of this. Importantly, not updating to the latest version is often a conscious decision. The newer 
version may have problems that the maintainer is trying to solve, or that have simply made the 
application worse than the old version. Also, OpenBSD may have different 
goals
 than the developers in 
other projects, which sometimes results in features and design or implementation choices that are 
undesirable from OpenBSD developers' point of view. The update may also be postponed because the 
new version is not considered a crucial update. 
If you really need a newer version of a port, you should ask the maintainer to update it (see 
below
on 
how to find out who the port maintainer is). If you can 
help
, all the better.