Portmaster

This article is about Portmaster, my ports management tool of choice.

Automatically delete old distfiles

Portmaster works like a charm with the default configuration. Only thing that annoyed me after a while is the fact that Portmaster doesn't delete old distfiles without asking first - so I would start a large upgrade, answer all the make config screens that Portmaster is clever enough to show me all at once, and then go do something else. Only to come back and see Portmaster waiting for my OK to delete libsomething-1.2.3.tar.bz2 (which has already been replaced by a new installed version). I can see why this may be nice for some people, but I want it to delete old distfiles without asking me, so I put the following line in /usr/local/etc/portmaster.rc:

ALWAYS_SCRUB_DISTFILES=dopt

That's it.

Automatically delete build depencencies after install

When installing stuff I often end up with a bunch of build dependencies that I don't need after the port has been built. Portmaster can remove these automatically, and will do so if given the command line option --delete-build-only or if the following line is present in /usr/local/etc/portmaster.rc:

PM_DEL_BUILD_ONLY=pm_dbo

This makes Portmaster clean up the build dependencies automatically.

Reinstall all ports

To reinstall (recompile and install) all installed ports, and at the same time upgrade the outdated ports I run the following command:

# portmaster -af

This should be done after upgrading the OS, that is, after going from one major version to another (like from 7.x to 8.x). Portmaster will give you a nice list with the actions it has performed after it finishes.

There is a lot of [other options] to portmaster of course, but like I said, the defaults are fine for me. Eventually I will update this page with more Portmaster commands and tricks.