Hitchhiker's Guide to Openbsd

15.1 - Introduction
There are a lot of third party applications available which one might want to use on an OpenBSD 
system. To make this software easier to install and manage, plus to help it comply with OpenBSD's 
policy and goals, the third party software is ported to OpenBSD. This porting effort can involve many 
different things. Examples are: making the software use the standard OpenBSD directory layout (e.g. 
configuration files go into 
/etc
), conforming to OpenBSD's shared library specifications, making the 
software more secure whenever possible, etc. 
The end result of the porting effort are ready-to-install binary packages. The aim of the package system 
is to keep track of which software gets installed, so that it may at any time be updated or removed very 
easily. This way, no unnecessary files are left behind, and users can keep their systems clean. The 
package system also helps ensure nothing is deleted by accident, causing software to stop functioning 
properly. Another advantage is that users rarely need to compile software from source, as packages 
have already been compiled and are available and ready to be used on an OpenBSD system. In minutes, 
a large number of packages can be fetched and installed, with everything in the right place. 
The packages and ports collection does NOT go through the same thorough security audit that is 
performed on the OpenBSD base system. Although we strive to keep the quality of the packages 
collection high, we just do not have enough human resources to ensure the same level of 
robustness and security. 
Of course 
security updates
for various applications are committed to the ports 
tree as soon as possible, and corresponding package security updates are made available as snapshots for 
-current. 
15.2 - Package Management