Hitchhiker's Guide to Openbsd

15.4.5 - Why is my Top-Favorite-Software not part of the base system?
Because OpenBSD is supposed to be a small stand-alone UNIX-like operating system, we need to draw 
a line as to what to include. Generally, for an application to be included in the base system: 
●
It must meet the high quality standards, laid out in the 
goals
 of the OpenBSD project. 
●
Its license must not be too restrictive and must be compatible with the BSD license. 
●
It must not be too large, in order to keep the size of the base system acceptable. 
Further answers to this question are also found in 
FAQ 1
. 
15.4.6 - What should I use: packages or ports?
In general, you are highly advised to use packages over building an application from ports. The 
OpenBSD ports team considers packages to be the goal of their porting work, not the ports themselves. 
Building a complex application from source is not trivial. Not only must the application be compiled, 
but the tools used to build it must be built as well. Unfortunately, OpenBSD, the tools, and the 
application are all evolving, and often, getting all the pieces working together is a challenge. Once 
everything works, a revision in any of the pieces the next day could render it broken. Every 
six months
, 
as a 
new release
 of OpenBSD is made, an effort is made to test the building of every port on every 
platform, but during the development cycle it is likely that some ports will break. 
In addition to having all the pieces work together, there is just the matter of time and resources required 
to compile some applications from source. A common example is 
CVSup
, a tool commonly used to 
track the OpenBSD source tree
. To install CVSup on a moderately fast system with a good Internet 
connection may take only about ten seconds -- the time required to download and unpack a single 779kB 
package file. In contrast, building CVSup on the same machine from source is a huge task, requiring 
many tools and bootstrapping a compiler, taking almost half an hour on the same machine. Other 
applications, such as 
Mozilla
 or 
KDE
 may take hours and huge amounts of disk space and RAM/swap to 
build. Why go through this much time and effort, when the programs are already compiled and sitting on 
your 
CD-ROM
 or 
FTP mirror
, waiting to be used? 
Of course, there are a few good reasons to use ports over packages in some cases: 
●
Distribution rules prohibit OpenBSD from distributing a package. 
●
You wish to modify or debug the application or study its source code. 
●
You need a flavor of a port that is not built by the OpenBSD ports team. 
●
You wish to alter the directory layout (i.e. modifying 
PREFIX
or 
SYSCONFDIR
). 
However, for most people and most applications, using packages is a much easier, and definitely the 
http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq15.html (24 of 27)9/4/2011 10:02:29 AM

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15 - The OpenBSD packages and ports system
recommended way of adding applications to an OpenBSD system.