Ports collection
Ports collections (or "ports trees", or just "ports") are the sets of makefiles and patches provided by the BSD-based operating systems, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD, as a simple method of installing software or creating binary packages. They are usually the base of a package management system, with ports handling package creation and additional tools managing package removal, upgrade, and other tasks. In addition to the BSDs, a few Linux distributions have implemented similar infrastructure, including Gentoo's Portage, Arch's Arch Build System (ABS), CRUX's Ports and Void Linux's Templates.

The main advantage of the ports system when compared with a binary distribution model is that the installation can be tuned and optimized according to available resources. For example, the system administrator can easily install a 32 bit version of a package if the 64 bit version is not available or is not optimized for that machine. Conversely, the main disadvantage is compilation time, which can be significant. For example, a full installation of a FreeBSD system, using ports, can take several days, depending on the hardware.
Q300867
makefile
MEDIA
Q300846
patch
Concept
Q34264
BSD
ORG
Q9135
operating system
Concept
Q34236
FreeBSD
MEDIA
Q34225
NetBSD
MEDIA
Q34215
OpenBSD
MISC
Q891055
package management system
Concept
Q131669
Linux distribution
Concept
Q121359
infrastructure
Concept
Q170378
Gentoo
MEDIA
Q908542
Portage
MEDIA
Q185576
Arch
MEDIA
Q185576
Arch Build System (ABS)
MEDIA
Q1142124
CRUX
MEDIA
Q19310966
Void Linux
ORG
Q730548
Ports collection
Concept
+32^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#decimal
32
NUMBER
+64^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#decimal
64
NUMBER
instance of
based on
based on
instance of
operating system
instance of
instance of
instance of
instance of