Presented by

  • Ben Woods

    Ben Woods
    @woodsb02

    Ben is a FreeBSD developer, having used the UNIX-derived operating system for 10 years, and has been a ports committer since 2016. His focus as a developer has tended towards improving FreeBSD usability as a desktop and laptop operating system, including ports work in multimedia and desktop applications. He also runs FreeBSD on his home server and AWS environments, and maintains a few ports which assist in server monitoring and management. In his day job, Ben works as an industrial control systems engineer at an Australian oil and gas company. Whilst he would like for his work life and personal FreeBSD hobby to intersect more, he has been unable to achieve this to date.

Abstract

Celebrating 25 years of FreeBSD ports - the "App Store" that existed before the term was claimed as trademark. But have you looked under the hood to see how it works? This presentation will provide an introduction to the FreeBSD ports tree works, including: - why the ports tree is required - the use case for ports, and how this has evolved over time - ports tree internals - how it works - ports development - examples of how to change an existing port, and how to create a new port - the road to becoming a ports committer, and how you can contribute to the ports tree This presentation is targeted at people who are seeking the answer to the big question "where do packages come from?", and also to those looking to advance their use or development of the ports tree. Linux Australia: http://mirror.linux.org.au/pub/linux.conf.au/2020/room_9/Tuesday/Introduction_to_FreeBSD_Ports_25_years_and_counting.webm YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zj_GXPHLyGw