On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 12:30:18PM +0200, Marc Espie wrote: > If you really want to look at things, compiling the port is very easy, though > it will usually take longer (sometimes much longer for monsters like > libreoffice). It's as stupid as cd /usr/ports/lang/swi-prolog && make install > > Most software compiles just fine on OpenBSD. It's just that if you want > to do it by hand, you have to hunt for the dependencies, and give the right > environment/options to configure.
Another way to look at things is that the ports system is mostly "Automated" hand builds. It was designed to be as transparent as possible. Apart from the paraphernalia needed to version packages, handle lists of files, and track dependencies, it's just fetch/extract/patch/configure/build/install (obvious oversimplification), but it's not something arcane and impossible to understand.
