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Scripts)This section explains the most common things to consider when creating a port.
bsd.port.mk expects ports to work
with a “stage directory”. This means that a port
must not install files directly to the regular destination
directories (that is, under PREFIX, for
example) but instead into a separate directory from which the
package is then built. In many cases, this does not require
root privileges, making it possible to build packages as an
unprivileged user. With staging, the port is built and
installed into the stage directory,
STAGEDIR. A package is created from the
stage directory and then installed on the system. Automake
tools refer to this concept as DESTDIR, but
in FreeBSD, DESTDIR has a different meaning
(see Section 10.4, “PREFIX and
DESTDIR”).
No port really needs to be root. It
can mostly be avoided by using USES=uidfix.
If the port still runs commands like chown(8),
chgrp(1), or forces owner or group with install(1)
then use USES=fakeroot
to fake those calls. Some patching of the port's
Makefiles will be needed.
Meta ports, or ports that do not install files themselves but only depend on other ports, must avoid needlessly extracting the mtree(8) to the stage directory. This is the basic directory layout of the package, and these empty directories will be seen as orphans. To prevent mtree(8) extraction, add this line:
NO_MTREE= yes
Metaports should use USES=metaport.
It sets up defaults for ports that do not fetch, build, or
install anything.
Staging is enabled by prepending
STAGEDIR to paths used in the
pre-install,
do-install, and
post-install targets (see the
examples through the book). Typically, this includes
PREFIX, ETCDIR,
DATADIR, EXAMPLESDIR,
MANPREFIX, DOCSDIR, and
so on. Directories should be created as part of the
post-install target. Avoid using
absolute paths whenever possible.
Ports that install kernel modules must prepend
STAGEDIR to their destination, by default
/boot/modules.
When creating a symbolic link, relative ones are strongly
recommended. Use ${RLN} to create relative
symbolic links. It uses install(1) under the hood to
automatically figure out the relative link to create.
${RLN} uses install(1)'s
relative symbolic feature which frees the porter of
computing the relative path.
${RLN} ${STAGEDIR}${PREFIX}/lib/libfoo.so.42 ${STAGEDIR}${PREFIX}/lib/libfoo.so
${RLN} ${STAGEDIR}${PREFIX}/libexec/foo/bar ${STAGEDIR}${PREFIX}/bin/bar
${RLN} ${STAGEDIR}/var/cache/foo ${STAGEDIR}${PREFIX}/share/fooWill generate:
%ls -lF ${STAGEDIR}${PREFIX}/liblrwxr-xr-x 1 nobody nobody 181 Aug 3 11:27 libfoo.so@ -> libfoo.so.42 -rwxr-xr-x 1 nobody nobody 15 Aug 3 11:24 libfoo.so.42*%ls -lF ${STAGEDIR}${PREFIX}/binlrwxr-xr-x 1 nobody nobody 181 Aug 3 11:27 bar@ -> ../libexec/foo/bar%ls -lF ${STAGEDIRDIR}${PREFIX}/sharelrwxr-xr-x 1 nobody nobody 181 Aug 3 11:27 foo@ -> ../../../var/cache/foo
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