# Building gnome and saving the sources....help please!



## gman88 (Jul 19, 2010)

I am fairly new to FreeBSD and elected to use it for a mail server due to some help I found, specifically for FreeBSD, on the net.  And, FreeBSD is great, by the way - not saying that to get some help....lol. I've learned a lot, but,I know that this is an extraordinarily basic question.  I like to have a Desktop (gnome) because I am learning (at 58!) and have very limited physical space in a small office in my home.  As I work on this mail server and some scripts I am writing, periodically, I simply bugger things and really need to start over.  I am doing something like "cd /usr/ports/x11/gnome2"  and then doing "make install clean" to build gnome (similarly for xorg) - and the whole thing takes hours.  It's odd because I notice that in /usr/ports/distfiles the sources for mysql, perl, mail server packages, etc. are saved.  Is there a way I could save the gnome sources.  I could just move them to a local box and get them via ftp - as a big tarball.  Man - I need some sort of system because at this rate I'll be 100 - or dead - before I finish this thing.....  

Thanks for helping the elderly....


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## DutchDaemon (Jul 19, 2010)

Why not use packages then, at least to get up and running?


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## gman88 (Jul 19, 2010)

*Not certain of the difference..*

Well - you know I'm new to this and I confess that I have not read the handbook.  if you mean doing somthing like "pkg_add -r gnome2" is that faster....?  Or does it save sources..?  Sorry for the idiotic questions.


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## gman88 (Jul 19, 2010)

If I don't include the "clean" portion of the command would it leave the sources in the distfiles directory?  Also, I understand that these packages change - at the moment, that is not an issue given what I'm doing.


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## gman88 (Jul 19, 2010)

*My mistake..*

I need a week of.  I am building the Desktop with the following:

pkg_add -r xorg
pkg_add -r gnome2


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## wblock@ (Jul 19, 2010)

You haven't described what you are doing that's making it necessary to reinstall ports.

Possibly a basic misunderstanding.  Checking the Handbook saves time overall.


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## SirDice (Jul 19, 2010)

All the source files needed to build a port end up in /usr/ports/distfiles. This includes all the Gnome sources.


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## SirDice (Jul 19, 2010)

gman88 said:
			
		

> If I don't include the "clean" portion of the command would it leave the sources in the distfiles directory?


A "make clean" only cleans the work (/usr/ports/*/*/work) directory


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## gman88 (Jul 21, 2010)

Thanks guys and I apologize for the rather idiotic questions..


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