# Changing constants in a particular port



## BSDBernd (Jul 14, 2014)

Hi,

I would like to experiment with the values of the default LCD_FILTER of the freetype2 library. There seem to be lots of things that one could do with that library, one could tweak several things, as has been done in e.g. Ubuntu to give the fonts in that system a particular look. My fonts already look quite beautiful because I switched on the LCD_FILTER option in the port and because I use a certain Xft setup. 

But I would like to do a little fine-tuning. Yes, I could install the famous Infinality patches, but I want to look into that library so that I learn a little bit.

In short, before reinstalling that library, I presumably first need the source code (which I did not install when setting up my system). What is the standard way to download the source of a package and compile it on one's own system? Is there a good guide for this and in particular, where could I read more about patches? When I understand this right, one can add patches to a particular port to change things. 

Thank you for any answer.


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## SirDice (Jul 14, 2014)

*Re: Changing constants in a particular port ..*



			
				BSDBernd said:
			
		

> In short, before reinstalling that library, I presumably first need the source code (which I did not install when setting up my system). What is the standard way to download the source of a package and compile it on ones own system?




```
cd /usr/ports/<category>/<portname>
make fetch # Fetches the source
make extract # Extracts the source in work directory
make patch # Applies FreeBSD specific patches
make configure # Runs the port's ./configure if it exists
make install # Builds and installs the port
make package # creates a package of the port
```

At any one point you can go into the port's work directory and modify the source directly.



> Is there a good guide for this and in particular, where could I read more about patches? When I understand this right, one can add patches to a particular port to change things.


See ports(7) and FreeBSD Porter's Handbook.


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## BSDBernd (Jul 14, 2014)

Thank you, that is great information.


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## jb_fvwm2 (Jul 14, 2014)

In the past I recall even posting a mini howto somewhere that fixed some issue. It was years ago however, but can probably be found by searching the forum, not to imply that that would be easy (too many results from a search).


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