“Dan Langille wanted an easier way to find out about recent
changes and updates to the FreeBSD ports. So over the past six
weeks, the New Zealand-based software engineer developed
freshports.org, because, he says, there was “nothing around that
did it already.” His “entirely automated” system, using PHP,
MySQL, Apache, awk and perl running on a FreeBSD machine, keeps
up-to-date by parsing messages from a mailing list and then, if
needed, getting information using CVS directly from the ports
tree.”
“It’s similar to FreeBSD’s Port Changes webpage, but Langille
says, “not quite the same — it’s like mine but I took it one step
further.”
“Freshports.org lists information about recently updated ports
which can be displayed by all categories, individual categories and
the date of the last change. According to the website, the status
is based on the changes of the Makefile, pkg/DESC or pkg/COMMENT
files for a port.”
Web Webster has more than 20 years of writing and editorial experience in the tech sector. He’s written and edited news, demand generation, user-focused, and thought leadership content for business software solutions, consumer tech, and Linux Today, he edits and writes for a portfolio of tech industry news and analysis websites including webopedia.com, and DatabaseJournal.com.
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