# Ports tree overlay in poudriere



## einsibjani (Nov 24, 2022)

Currently we have a local ports tree repo, where we push our local changes and merge from upstream every hour.

Our local changes are both private ports that we haven't merged upstream and also local patches to existing ports.

This often causes problems, failed merges and bad patches based on our ports tree.

I want to try to switch to using ports tree overlay (-O in poudrere) but I've found very little documentation about it.
Let's say I want to add one patch for devel/someport, should I copy the whole devel/someport to my overlay and add my patch or could I create devel/someport in my overlay tree with just one patch under files?

Also, let's say I copy an existing port to my overlay tree but fail to keep it in sync with upstream. What happens if a new patch is added to upstream tree? I assume the overlay doesn't squash it so poudriere will try to apply the patch?


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