# Maintenance of ports - ideas?



## uzsolt (Aug 16, 2015)

Hello all!

I'm maintaining some (simple) ports and I need some idea about it.

I wrote a small script to automatize this task. The problem is how should I do the modifies on the desired port - without polluting the ports tree.
First idea was: `cp -r category/desired_port category/desired_port.orig`. I can made the changes in the desired_port and after I can easily generate the `diff` (my script does it, and run `make makesum` if PORTVERSION changed, etc.) and after the procedure the script restore the original state. It worked well.

Second idea: I will extract (or copy) only the specified port into a directory (outside from the ports directory). I will do the modifications and the script `mount` it into the ports tree (`mount -t nullfs /work/modified_port /usr/ports/category/modified_port`). I think it's better because the port tree will untouched. But it doesn't work with ports-mgmt/poudriere because `poudriere` do an another `mount_nullfs` so my modifies don't appears in poudriere's ports tree.

Is there any tool to solve this task (port updating)? Or is there (has anybody) any ideas/tricks?

Thanks!


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## kpa (Aug 16, 2015)

You can have multiple ports trees with ports-mgmt/poudriere, for example `poudriere bulk -p myportstree` builds using ports tree myportstree. You could leave the default ports tree untouched and do your work on the second one. Creation of the diffs could be then automated by comparing the two ports trees.


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## uzsolt (Aug 17, 2015)

Thanks for reply! I knew about multiple ports trees but I don't want multiply about 900M because of some port - it's a small VPS so every 100M counts


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