Another handy resource is the FreeBSD Ports
Monitoring System (also known as
portsmon
). This system comprises a database
that processes information from several sources and allows it to
be browsed via a web interface. Currently, the ports Problem
Reports (PRs), the error logs from the build cluster, and
individual files from the ports collection are used. In the
future, this will be expanded to include the distfile survey, as
well as other sources.
To get started, you can view all information about a particular port by using the Overview of One Port.
As of this writing, this is the only resource available that
maps GNATS PR entries to portnames. (PR submitters do not
always include the portname in their Synopsis, although we would
prefer that they did.) So, portsmon
is a
good place to start if you want to find out whether an existing
port has any PRs filed against it and/or any build errors; or,
to find out if a new port that you may be thinking about
creating has already been submitted.
All FreeBSD documents are available for download at http://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/doc/
Questions that are not answered by the
documentation may be
sent to <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org>.
Send questions about this document to <freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.org>.