# Is the ports system available on the ARM (specifically Raspberry Pi)?



## mrjayviper (May 26, 2013)

If I were to build my own image of FreeBSD using some guide I found on the net (http://ogris.de/howtos/freebsd-raspberry.html), is it possible to get the ports system? I wanna want to install software using ports since I doubt packages will be available.

Thanks.


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## jozze (May 26, 2013)

Sure, you can use portsnap(8)() or devel/subversion to do the trick. I recommend devel/subversion since you already have it, according to installation procedure. With it you can get the latest updates and have more control over your ports tree. For example, if you want to downgrade to the way it was yesterday or whatever date you wish, you can do it.

Before either of these methods are invoked, make sure your /usr/ports is empty. You can just remove whatever is in there with `# rm -rf /usr/ports/*`, and let everything to be populated later on.

Using portsnap, run `# portsnap fetch extract` to populate your ports database for the first time, and then `# portsnap fetch update` whenever you have to update it.

With devel/subversion use `# svn co [url=svn://svn.freebsd.org/ports/head]svn://svn.freebsd.org/ports/head[/url] /usr/ports` to populate the ports database, and later on use `# svn up /usr/ports` to update it. With this method, you'll have to fetch the index manually. You can do it with either `# cd /usr/ports && make fetchindex` or `# portsdb -Fu`, which is my preferred method.

To check for new ports you can try `# portversion -v | grep -v =`, but I've been told there are more efficient ways without grep(1)() 

Since you'll be compiling from source, ports should work for ARM (and other architectures) as well.


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## mrjayviper (May 28, 2013)

Thanks for the detailed reply.


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## jozze (May 30, 2013)

No problem. By the way, I think portversion and portsdb are part of the ports-mgmt/portupgrade suite. If you're going to use ports-mgmt/portmaster the commands are a little different.

Cheers, and happy compiling


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