# Multiple installs



## murias (Feb 3, 2009)

With all the port and pkg tools is there a way to do multiple installs at once?

Hypothetically, lets say in the ports tree there are all of the perl5 modules in there, and there are quite a number of them.  Is there a way to install all of them with maybe only one command, instead of needing to portinstall, or cd /usr/ports/www/p5xxxxx && make install clean for each one?

Thanx,
Murias


----------



## DutchDaemon (Feb 3, 2009)

What's wrong with 'portinstall port1 port 2 port3 .. [portN]' or 'portinstall p5*'?


----------



## murias (Feb 3, 2009)

DutchDaemon said:
			
		

> What's wrong with 'portinstall port1 port 2 port3 .. [portN]' or 'portinstall p5*'?



seems that nothing is wrong with that... Except that maybe I should have read the man page for portinstall and seen the pkg_glob part.

Appreciate you pointing that out though.  each version of unix has its own little quarks and diffs.

Cheers


----------



## DutchDaemon (Feb 4, 2009)

Ok. If you are going to use portinstall to install a lot of ports at once, I advise you to use category/port for every port ('portinstall mail/postfix'), or the installation will halt when portinstall is unsure about which port you mean in case of naming ambiguities. 

The easiest way to find those (I feel) is to install 'psearch' from ports, which will print those category/port combinations. 

The good thing about portinstall is that it will install the ports in the right order (dependency-wise), which is not necessarily the command-line order you're using. I'd also advise using -c or -C when installing a lot of ports, or you'll have those blue config screens waiting for you to press 'enter', usually right after you've left the room or gone to bed.


----------

