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bsd.port.mk — ports tree master Makefile fragment

.include <bsd.port.mk>

bsd.port.mk holds all the standard routines used by the ports tree. Some variables and targets are for its internal use only. The rest is documented here.

bsd.port.mk also uses quite a few helper scripts. Those live under ${PORTSDIR}/infrastructure/bin, and they do have manpages under ${PORTSDIR}/infrastructure/man.

Other BSD variants, as well as older versions of bsd.port.mk, include other targets and variables. Conversion methods are outlined here.

Most variables and targets are documented, with very few exceptions.

This documentation covers the current targets, variables and paths used by bsd.port.mk. There is a separate section covering the fake framework, a section explaining flavors and multi-packages, and a section covering the generation of package information.

It ends with sections on obsolete constructs that a porter may need when converting from other ports systems.

Binary package details are mostly covered in pkg_create(1) for the packing-list details, and in pkg_add(1) for the installation semantics.

Selected common user activity such as the building of every package in the system is covered by ports(7) instead. packages(7) provides an overview of the result.

Print all dependencies for a port in order to build it, run it, build and run it, or to run regression tests. The output is formatted as package specification pairs, in a form suitable for tsort(1).
Print all dependencies a package depends upon for building, running, or both, as a list of package names, sorted by dependency order with tsort(1), most dependent port first.
Print a list of first level package specifications a port depends as build dependencies, library dependencies, test dependencies or run dependencies.
User convenience target that displays the result of full-{build,run}-depends in a more readable way.
Most standard targets can be specialized according to a given port's needs. If defined, the pre-* hook will be invoked before running the normal action; the do-* hook will be invoked instead of the normal action; the post-* hook will be invoked after the normal action. Specialization hooks exist for build, configure, distpatch, extract, fake, install, patch, test. See individual targets for exceptions.
Complete the ${CHECKSUM_FILE} record of checksums with files that have been added since makesum. Complain if anything does not match.
Process the full LIB_DEPENDS list into a form suitable for pkg_create(1), see print-package-args.
, all
Default target. Build the port. Essentially invoke 
env -i ${MAKE_ENV} ${MAKE_PROGRAM} ${MAKE_FLAGS} \
	-f ${MAKE_FILE} ${ALL_TARGET}
Verify the ports mentioned in BUILD_DEPENDS, by checking the corresponding packages are actually installed, and install the missing ports by recursing through the ports tree. Deprecated, see prepare.
Introspection target. Verify from the ports tree, without building anything, that the current subpackage will register okay (see PLIST_REPOSITORY).
Apply check-register to all subpackages of the current port.
Debugging version of the patch target that simulates invoking patch(1).
Check distribution archives and distribution patches control sum against the results recorded in ${CHECKSUM_FILE}, using the message digest (checksum) utilities listed in ${PREFERRED_CIPHERS}. All the files needed to recreate a port should be in ${CHECKSUMFILES} and checksummed. Invoking checksum with REFETCH=true will try to fetch a version with the correct checksum from the OpenBSD main archive site in the case of a checksum mismatch. NO_CHECKSUM can be used to avoid all checksumming steps.
Clean ports contents. By default, it will clean the work directory. It can be invoked as make clean='[depends build bulk work fake flavors dist install sub package packages plist]'.
work
Clean work directory.
bulk
Clean bulk cookie.
build
Clean the WRKBUILD directory (only useful if SEPARATE_BUILD is set).
depends
Recurse into dependencies.
dist
Clean distribution files.
fake
Clean fake installation directory.
flavors
Clean all work directories.
install
Uninstall package.
package
Remove all copies of package file.
plist
Remove registered packing lists of all subpackages.
sub
With install or package, clean subpackages as well.
packages
Shorthand for ‘sub package’.
all
Shorthand for ‘work flavors packages plist’.
Shorthand for ‘make clean=depends’.
Configure the port. Might be a void operation. Unless overridden, configure creates the ${WRKBUILD} directory (see SEPARATE_BUILD), and runs whatever configuration methods are recorded in CONFIGURE_STYLE.
Check all the port's dependencies, that is: build-depends, lib-depends, run-depends, test-depends.
Prints a one-line index entry of the port, suitable for ${PORTSDIR}/INDEX.
Shorthand for ‘make clean=dist’.
Apply distribution patches only. See patch and PATCH_CASES for details.
Dump the values of all relevant variables in a port, prepended with the port's FULLPKGPATH.
Extract the distribution files under ${WRKDIR} (but see EXTRACT_ONLY and NO_DEPENDS). Refer to EXTRACT_CASES for a complete description. Do not use pre-extract and do-extract hooks.
Do a fake port installation, that is, simulate the port installation under ${WRKINST}. There is no do-fake and post-fake hooks. fake actually uses pre-fake, pre-install, do-install and post-install. Override pre-install, do-install, or post-install to change behavior. Do not touch pre-fake unless you really know what you are doing. See THE FAKE FRAMEWORK section below.
Check WANTLIB against the list of installed packages and libraries in the ports tree. See print-package-args.
Fetch the distribution files and patchfiles, using ${FETCH_CMD}. Each file of the DISTFILES and PATCHFILES lists is retrieved, if necessary, from the list of sites in MASTER_SITES.

If a filename ends with a ‘:0’ to ‘:9’ extension, it will be retrieved from MASTER_SITES0 to MASTER_SITES9 instead. After stripping that extension if necessary, if the entry parses as ‘filename{url}sufx’ it will be fetched as urlsufx instead, yet still stored as filenamesufx.

Transfers in progress will be stored as filenamesufx.part.

The ports framework uses ${DISTDIR}/${DIST_SUBDIR} (aliased to ${FULLDISTDIR}) to cache the ports distribution files and patch files. Note that this framework is also used by mirroring scripts, which will also retrieve SUPDISTFILES, to fill with supplementary distribution files which are not needed for every configuration.

Note that fetching a significant number of distfiles, or fetching all distfiles relevant to a port and dependencies is better accomplished using dpb(1) with the -F option.

Use of {pre,do,post}-fetch hooks is forbidden, as this would make mirroring of distfiles very complicated. See CHECKSUMFILES, CDROM_SITE, DISTDIR, DISTFILES, DIST_SUBDIR, FETCH_CMD, FETCH_MANUALLY, FETCH_SYMLINK_DISTFILES, FULLDISTDIR, MAKESUMFILES, MASTER_SITES, MASTER_SITES0, ..., MASTER_SITES9, PATCHFILES, SUPDISTFILES, REFETCH.

also fetches SUPDISTFILES, for use with e.g., makesum.
Top-level target, see ports(7).
Install the package after building. See the description of THE FAKE FRAMEWORK for the non-intuitive details of the way {pre,do,post}-install hooks are actually used by the ports tree.
Install all packages in a multi-packages port.
Verify that the library dependencies a port needs are actually there, by checking the library specifications.
Filter LIB_DEPENDS to keep only entries required by WANTLIB, and output a list of dependencies suitable for pkg_create(1), see print-package-args.
Verify that the LIB_DEPENDS and WANTLIB are accurate for the port. See port-lib-depends-check, which is quicker.
Check that PERMIT_PACKAGE_* settings match: if any dependency has a more restrictive setting, warn about it. This warning is advisory, because the automated license checking cannot figure out which ports were used only for building and did not taint the current port.
Create symbolic links in other directories that correspond to the port's CATEGORIES. Note that this does not affect bulk package building, since those links don't appear in the upper-level Makefiles. See also unlink-categories.
Manually obtain a lock on a given directory. Output must be used to update environment variables. The lock can be released with unlock. Seldom used, see ports(7) for details.
Create the ${CHECKSUM_FILE} list of recorded checksums by running the cryptographic fingerprint sha256 on ${MAKESUMFILES}. That normally includes ${DISTFILES}, ${SUPDISTFILES} and ${PATCHFILES}. NO_CHECKSUM can be used to avoid all checksumming steps.
Verify that makewhatis(8) can do a correct job with the port's manpages.
Top-level target, see mirroring-ports(7).
Debug target: generate the mirror-maker makefile fragment and use it to fetch files, see mirroring-ports(7).
Degenerate form of lib-depends-args that does not do anything. See print-package-args.
Degenerate form of wantlib-args that does not do anything. See print-package-args.
Build a port package (or packages in a MULTI_PACKAGES case) from the fake installation. Involves creating packaging information from templates (see COMMENT, SUBST_VARS among others) and invoking pkg_create(1) for each package in the MULTI_PACKAGES list. If the repository already contains up-to-date packages, they are not rebuilt. If PLIST_REPOSITORY is set, the resulting packaging information is compared with existing stuff, and saved if new, with loud complaints if it changed without a REVISION bump. Arch-independent packages are created in ${PACKAGE_REPOSITORY}/no-arch, and copied into ${PACKAGE_REPOSITORY}/${MACHINE_ARCH}/all as needed. If ${PERMIT_PACKAGE_FTP} is set to ‘Yes’, copies built packages into ${PACKAGE_REPOSITORY}/${MACHINE_ARCH}/ftp, using hard links if possible. If ${PERMIT_PACKAGE_CDROM} is set to ‘Yes’, copies built packages into ${PACKAGE_REPOSITORY}/${MACHINE_ARCH}/cdrom, using hard links if possible.
Apply distribution and OpenBSD specific patches. Because of historical accident, patch does not follow the exact same scheme other standard targets do. Namely, patch invokes pre-patch (if defined), do-patch, and post-patch, but the default do-patch target invokes distpatch directly. So, if the do-patch target is overridden, it should still begin by calling ‘make distpatch’, before applying OpenBSD specific patches. Accordingly, the exact sequence of hooks is: pre-patch, do-distpatch, post-distpatch, do-patch, post-patch. If ${PATCHDIR} exists, the files described under PATCH_LIST will be applied under WRKDIST. See also REORDER_DEPENDENCIES for possible post-patch clean-up.
Connect to the first site in MASTER_SITES, in the right directory, and leaves user at ftp(1)'s prompt.
Top-level target, see ports(7).
Verify that the LIB_DEPENDS and WANTLIB hold all shared libraries used for every package in the port. See library-specs(7). This makes use of print-plist-with-depends to avoid actually building the packages, it only needs the completion of the fake stage, and thus is quicker than lib-depends-check, unless you already have all binary packages.
Resolve WANTLIB against the ports tree itself and system libraries, without looking at built or installed packages, and writes a list of options suitable for pkg_create(1). See print-package-args.
Prepare a port for building, by checking and installing all required dependencies, constructed from LIB_DEPENDS and BUILD_DEPENDS. In MULTI_PACKAGES setups, see FLAVORS AND MULTI_PACKAGES.
Print all dependency-related information that will be passed as parameters to pkg_create(1), e.g., -W wantlib and -P depends lines.

Those parameters are generated by run-depends-args for RUN_DEPENDENCIES handling, a form of lib-depends-args for LIB_DEPENDS and WANTLIB interaction, and a form of wantlib-args for WANTLIB resolution.

Variables lib_depends_args and wantlib_args control the exact behavior: lib_depends_args is normally set to lib-depends-args, but will be set to all-lib-depends-args by port-lib-depends-check, in order to have access to the full list of LIB_DEPENDS for figuring out missing WANTLIB. wantlib_args is normally set to wantlib-args but it may be set to port-wantlib-args for introspection purposes, to fake-wantlib-args to avoid some checks, or to no-wantlib-args to avoid expensive WANTLIB checks entirely.

Print the update signature, as computed using information from the ports tree, in the same format used for pkg_info(1) -S.
Generate and print a package packing-list from the static information present in the port.
Iterate over print-plist for all subpackages in a given port.
Iterate over print-plist-with-depends for all subpackages in a given port.
Generate and print package contents from the static information present in the port. In contrast with print-plist, the package contents only consists of files, all tagged with category markers such as @file. See pkg_create(1).
Generate and print the list of static and dynamic libraries present in the port. See pkg_create(1).
Like print-plist-libs, but slower. It also handles LIB_DEPENDS, RUN_DEPENDS, and WANTLIB, so that the packing-list has complete dependency information.
Like print-plist, but slower. It also handles LIB_DEPENDS, RUN_DEPENDS, and WANTLIB, so that the packing-list is complete.
Force rebuild of the port.
Force reinstallation of a port, by first cleaning the old installation. Seldom needed, as update will often do the right thing.
Rebuild the packages of a port after removing existing packages.
Verify the ports mentioned in RUN_DEPENDS, by checking the corresponding packages are actually installed, and install the missing ports by recursing through the ports tree. Invoked right before installing the package.
Process RUN_DEPENDS and outputs a list of dependencies suitable for pkg_create(1), see print-package-args.
Invoked as make show=name, show the contents of ${name}. Invoked as make show="name1 name2 ...", show the contents of ${name1} ${name2} ..., one variable value per line. Mostly used from recursive makes, or to know the contents of another port's variables without guessing wrongly.
Print the size of ${WRKINST}. Used by some options of dpb(1), suitable for BULK_TARGETS.
Print the list of actual installed packages found out by prepare.
Print the list of actual installed packages found out by prepare and test-depends.
Print the list of pkgpath(7) for all ports that will be affected by the current port changing. Works by walking the list of dependencies, in reverse.
Print all running dependencies for a port, one per-line, without duplicates.
Build a port package. Exactly like package, but affects only one single subpackage in multi-packages ports.
Prints the size of the work directory. Used by some options of dpb(1), suitable for BULK_TARGETS.
Update an existing installation to a newer package, exactly like update, but affects only one single subpackage in multi-packages ports.
Run regression tests for the port. Essentially depend on a correct build and invoke 
env -i ${ALL_TEST_ENV} ${MAKE_PROGRAM} ${ALL_TEST_FLAGS} \
	-f ${MAKE_FILE} ${TEST_TARGET} ${TEST_LOG}

If a port needs some other ports installed to run regression tests, use TEST_DEPENDS. If a port needs special configuration or build options to enable regression testing, define a ‘test’ FLAVOR.

Verify packages needed for regression tests, using the same scheme as build-depends. Only invoked when regression tests are run, or explicitly through depends.
Remove symbolic links in other directories that correspond to the port's CATEGORIES. See also link-categories.
Manually release a lock on a given directory. See lock.
Create or update patches for a port, using update-patches(1), which invokes diff(1) between file and file.orig, based on file.orig existence. In order to generate a patch, the original file needs to be named file.orig and file edited. After the target is invoked, the patches are placed under the patches/ directory. It moves existing patches from patch-file to patch-file.orig.
Update an existing installation to a newer package: scan the installation for a package with the same FULLPKGPATH, and update it using ‘pkg_add -r’ if a newer package is available. In multi-packages ports, all relevant packages are updated. See UPDATE_COOKIES_DIR and FORCE_UPDATE as well.
Update an installed package or perform a fresh installation, by using ‘pkg_add -r’. Handles one single package in multi-packages ports. See UPDATE_COOKIES_DIR and FORCE_UPDATE as well.
Update installed packages or perform a fresh installation, by using ‘pkg_add -r’. Handles all packages in multi-packages ports. See UPDATE_COOKIES_DIR and FORCE_UPDATE as well.
Update the packing lists for a port, using the fake installation and the existing packing lists. update-plist should produce a mostly correct PLIST file, handling GNU info(1) files, setuid files, and empty directories. It moves an existing file to PLIST.orig. If the generated list includes files and directories that shouldn't be included, comment these like this: 
@comment unwanted-file
@comment unwanted-dir/

Subsequent calls to update-plist will automatically recognize and handle such lines correctly.

update-plist may not handle flavor and multi-packages situations correctly yet, so beware.

Similar to show, except that it prefixes each value with the variable name, e.g., VAR=value. Also note that it does not show undefined variables, contrary to show which outputs blank lines for these.
Call port-wantlib-args and fake-wantlib-args and compare the results, errors out in case of discrepancies. See print-package-args.

Note that some variables are marked as ‘User-settings’, which means that individual ports should not modify them, and that some variables are marked as ‘read-only’, which means that they shouldn't ever be changed. In a MULTI_PACKAGES setup, some variables have settings specific to a given subpackage. See FLAVORS AND MULTI_PACKAGES.

Invoked as make show=name, show the contents of ${name}. Invoked as make show="name1 name2 ...", show the contents of ${name1} ${name2} ..., one variable value per line.
Flags passed to ${MAKE} invocations during the fake process. Equals ${MAKE_FLAGS} ${DESTDIRNAME}=${WRKINST} ${FAKE_FLAGS}. Read-only.
Environment passed to test. Equals ${MAKE_ENV} ${TEST_ENV}. Read-only.
Flags passed to ${MAKE} invocations during test. Equals ${MAKE_FLAGS} ${TEST_FLAGS}. Read-only.
Target used to build software. Default is ‘all’. Can be set to empty, to yield a package's default target.
Set to the list of apm(4) architectures. Read-only. Use with ONLY_FOR_ARCHS.
Current machine architecture. Read-only.
Location of the autoconf binary if needed. Defaults to autoconf (though autoreconf might be more appropriate).
Where to invoke autoconf if ${CONFIGURE_STYLE} includes autoconf. Defaults to ${WRKSRC}.
Starting with OpenBSD 3.3, several versions of autoconf may coexist peacefully. The main autoconf script is a shell wrapper in the devel/metaauto package, and similarly for automake. Setting AUTOCONF_VERSION along with CONFIGURE_STYLE set to autoconf is the correct way to specify which one to use. AUTOCONF_VERSION defaults to 2.13. If autoconf must be run manually, MODGNU_AUTOCONF_DEPENDS can be used to specify what packages to depend upon.
Location of the autoheader binary. Defaults to autoheader.
Several versions of automake may coexist peacefully. AUTOMAKE_VERSION must be set before trying to run automake. Defaults to 1.4. Note that even if CONFIGURE_STYLE includes automake, automake should still be run manually during the right configure stage.
Location of the autoupdate binary. Defaults to autoupdate.
Full pkgpath(7) to the current port, taking flavors into account. See also BUILD_PKGPATH, which also includes pseudo-flavors. Read-only.
User settings. Base location for system-wide state directory. Defaults to ${VARBASE}. See LOCALSTATEDIR.
User settings. Base location for system-wide configuration files. Defaults to /etc. See SYSCONFDIR.
User-settings. Set to ‘Yes’ to avoid ports that require user-interaction. Use in conjunction with INTERACTIVE to simplify bulk-package builds. (See IGNORE).
Set to the list of big-endian architectures. Read-only. Use with NOT_FOR_ARCHS and ONLY_FOR_ARCHS.
The actual list of packages that will be built, once architecture problems and pseudo-flavors have been taken into account. See FLAVORS AND MULTI_PACKAGES.
Define only for broken ports, set to reason the port is broken. See also NO_IGNORE, TRY_BROKEN.
Define only for ports broken on a given architecture. Distinct from ONLY_FOR_ARCHS and NOT_FOR_ARCHS, which are used to mark ports for which support for some architectures does not exist at all, or is completely obsolete.
Macros passed to make and configure invocations. Set based on corresponding INSTALL_* variables.
List of other ports the current port needs to build correctly. Each item has the form ‘[pkgspec:]pkgpath[:target]’. ‘target’ defaults to ‘install’. The package installed must conform to the ‘pkgspec’, which is by default obtained from the dependent ‘pkgpath’ (see PKGSPEC). If no installation is involved, the infrastructure will still check that the directory would provide a package conforming to the ‘pkgspec’. ‘pkgpath’ is set relative to ${PORTSDIR}, see pkgpath(7) for details. Build dependencies are checked before the extract stage during prepare.

Build dependencies with a patch, configure or build target will be processed in a subdirectory of the working directory, specifically, in ${WRKDIR}/some/directory, with some/directory the directory part of the ‘pkgpath’.

User settings. Defaults to ‘No’. Set to ‘Yes’ during bulk builds.

When BUILD_ONCE is set to ‘Yes’, all PSEUDO_FLAVORS matching ‘no_*’ will be disabled, unless the special pseudo-flavor ‘bootstrap’ is also set.

This is a bulk build optimisation, automatically set by dpb(1): to avoid rebuilding the same package several times, a full bulk build will strip most ports of pseudo-packages variations that remove subpackages.

For instance, an individual package may depend on databases/db/v4,no_java,no_tcl, to avoid bringing a jdk in during a quick build. Nevertheless, during a full bulk build, databases/db/v4 will only be built once, as the pseudo-flavor will be automatically removed.

However, the extra ‘bootstrap’ rule is needed to take build cycles into account. For instance, the x11/gnome/gvfs,-goa subpackage depends on gnome-online-accounts, which in turn requires x11/gnome/gvfs,-main to build (through its dependencies). So x11/gnome/gvfs has PSEUDO_FLAVORS = no_smb no_goa bootstrap and the GNOME build first builds x11/gnome/gvfs,no_smb,no_goa,bootstrap,-main which is later used to rebuild x11/gnome/gvfs.

Full pkgpath(7) to the current port, taking flavors and pseudo-flavors into account. See also BASE_PKGPATH, which doesn't include pseudo-flavors. Mostly useful to write dependencies for subpackages like this: LIB_DEPENDS-foo=${BUILD_PKGPATH} and avoid starting to build a package with some other flavor combination. See pkgpath(7) on the subject of ‘pkgpath normalisation’. Read-only.
User settings. If set to ‘Yes’, all successful package builds and installations will clean their working directories, after invoking any targets mentioned in BULK_TARGETS, and commands mentioned in BULK_DO. Can be set on a per-${PKGPATH} basis. For instance, setting BULK_misc/screen=No will override any BULK=Yes passed on the command line. If set to ‘Auto’, it will apply to dependencies, but not to the current port itself. See BULK_COOKIES_DIR. Defaults to ‘Auto’.
User settings. Used to store cookies for successful bulk-package builds, defaults to ${PORTSDIR}/bulk/${MACHINE_ARCH}.
Commands to run after each bulk package build before cleaning up the working directory. Empty defaults. Can be set on a per-${PKGPATH} basis, e.g., BULK_DO_${PKGPATH}=...
Flags to pass to build each target in BULK_TARGETS.
Targets to run after each bulk package build before cleaning up the working directory. Empty defaults. Can be set on a per-${PKGPATH} basis, e.g., BULK_TARGETS_${PKGPATH}=...
Name of the bzip2 binary.
List of descriptive categories into which this port falls. Mandatory. One entry must match the current pkgpath: devel/gmake must belong to the ‘devel’ category. See link-categories, unlink-categories.
Sets the cache directory used when USE_CCACHE is set to yes. Defaults to ${WRKOBJDIR}/.ccache.
Sets additional environment variables when USE_CCACHE is set to yes. For instance, to enable verbose logging, set CCACHE_ENV="CCACHE_LOGFILE=/tmp/ccache.log"
Flags appended to CFLAGS if WARNINGS is set.
Path to a local source that holds distribution files (usually a CD-ROM or other similar media), used to retrieve distribution files before going to the network. Defaults to empty, set to /cdrom/distfiles/${DIST_SUBDIR} to check that path. Distribution files are still copied or linked (see FETCH_SYMLINK_DISTFILES) into DISTDIR if they are found under CDROM_SITE.
Default flags passed to the compiler for building. Many ports ignore it. See also COPTS, CDIAGFLAGS.
User settings. If set to ‘Yes’, every package build will verify that shared libraries are correctly registered. This is essentially the same as running ‘make lib-depends-check’ after each package build. Defaults to ‘No’, as this can be a big performance hit.
List of all files that need to be retrieved by fetch, with DIST_SUBDIR prepended and with the master site selection extension removed. Read-only. See also MAKESUMFILES.
Location for this port's checksums, used by addsum, checksum, and makesum. Defaults to distinfo.
User settings. Choose whether or not to checksum packages while building. Deposits result in ${PACKAGE_REPOSITORY}/${MACHINE_ARCH}/cksums/${FULLPKGNAME}.sha256. Can be set to ‘Yes’ to compute a checksum for all packages, ‘cdrom’ to compute it only for PERMIT_PACKAGE_CDROM packages or to ‘ftp’ to compute it only for PERMIT_PACKAGE_FTP packages. Defaults to ‘no’, which does not compute a checksum at all.
If set to ‘Yes’, the clean target will also clean dependencies. Can be overridden on a per-${PKGPATH} basis, by setting CLEANDEPENDS_${PKGPATH}.
Short, one line description of the port, used for the package, and in the INDEX.
Same as COMMENT but used for sub package -foo in a multi-package setup.
Same as COMMENT but used for a flavored package, if the non-flavored comment is inappropriate.
Same as COMMENT but used for a sub-, flavored package.
The first release where the port was made part of the standard distribution. If the current OpenBSD version is >= this version then a notice will be displayed instead of the port being built.
Used when CONFIGURE_STYLE=gnu, or with MODULES += gnu. List of config.site fragments that will speed up gnu-configure, and prevent it from preferring various gnu programs, unless BUILD_DEPENDS explicitly ask for them. Read-only, available for debugging purposes.
Arguments to pass to configure script. Defaults are empty, except for GNU-style configure, where prefix and sysconfdir are set.
Basic environment passed to configure script (path and libtool setup). GNU-style configure adds a lot more variables.
Set to name of script invoked by the configure target, if appropriate. Should be either an absolute path, or relative to ${WRKSRC}.
Set to style of configuration that needs to happen.

If ‘perl’, assume perl(1) ExtUtils::MakeMaker(3p) style. Add ‘modbuild’ to enable Module::Build(3p), ‘modbuild tiny’ to enable Module::Build::Tiny(3p), or ‘modinst’ for Module::Install(3p) style.

If ‘gnu’, assume GNU configure style. Add ‘dest’ if port does not handle DESTDIR correctly, and needs to be configured to add DESTDIR to prefixes (see also DESTDIRNAME). Add ‘old’ if port is an older autoconf port that does not recognize --sysconfdir. Add ‘autoconf’ if autoconf needs to be rerun first, but set ‘no-autoheader’ to prevent autoheader from running. Add ‘automake’ if automake may need to be rerun. Otherwise, automake will be explicitly disabled. Note that automake is never run automatically. In order to use it, CONFIGURE_STYLE should include ‘automake’ and there should be a {pre,do}-configure target running automake.

If ‘imake’, assume port configures using X11 ports Imakefile framework. Add ‘noman’ if port has no man pages the Imakefile should try installing.

If ‘simple’, there is a configure script, but it does not fit the normal GNU configure conventions.

Extensions may be defined by specific MODULES. See port-modules(5) for details.

User settings. Supplementary options appended to ${CFLAGS} for building. Since most ports ignore the COPTS convention, they are actually told to use ${CFLAGS} ${COPTS} as CFLAGS.
Flags appended to CXXFLAGS if WARNINGS is set.
Default flags passed to the C++ compiler for building. Many ports ignore it.
User settings. Supplementary options appended to ${CXXFLAGS} for building.
See DESTDIRNAME.
Name of variable to set to ${WRKINST} while faking. Usually DESTDIR. To be used in the rare cases where a port heeds DESTDIR in a few directories and needs to be configured with ‘gnu dest’, so that those few directories do not get in the way.
User settings. Directory where all ports distribution files and patchfiles are stashed. Defaults to ${PORTSDIR}/distfiles. Override if distribution files are stored elsewhere. Always use FULLDISTDIR to refer to ports' distribution files location, as it takes an eventual DIST_SUBDIR into account.
The main port's distribution files (the actual software source, except for binary-only ports). Will be retrieved from the MASTER_SITES (see fetch), checksummed and extracted (see checksum, extract). DISTFILES normally holds a list of files, possibly with ‘:0’ to ‘:9’ appended to select a different MASTER_SITES.

Each entry may optionally be of the form ‘filename{url}sufx’ to deal with sites that only offer archives as weird urls, doing the transfer of urlsufx into result file filenamesufx. For instance, if

DISTFILES = minetest-{minetest/archive/}${V}${EXTRACT_SUFX}

then fetch will retrieve from url ‘minetest/archive/${V}${EXTRACT_SUFX}’ into ‘minetest-${V}${EXTRACT_SUFX}’.

If ${DISTFILES} varies depending on FLAVORS or architecture, use SUPDISTFILES to ensure distfiles mirroring and makesum proper operation.

Name used to identify the port. See DISTFILES and PKGNAME.
Suffix used by distpatch to rename original files. Defaults to .bak.orig. Distinct from .orig to avoid confusing update-patches.
Optional subdirectory of ${DISTDIR} where the current port's distribution files and patchfiles will be located. See target fetch.
Set by the distributed ports builder to only get the information it needs from dump-vars.
User settings. Used to display ‘===> Configuring for foo’ and similar informative messages. Override to turn off, for instance.
User settings. Set it to ‘echo’ to see REORDER_DEPENDENCIES actions. Silent by default.
Epoch number of the current package. Defaults to empty (no need for numbering changes), then numbering starts at 0. Gets automatically incorporated into FULLPKGNAME as ‘v${EPOCH}’ to form a full package-name conforming to packages-specs(7).
List of errors found while parsing the port's Makefile. Display the errors before making any target, and if any error starts with "Fatal:", do not make anything. For instance: 
.if !defined(COMMENT)
ERRORS+="Fatal: Missing comment"
.endif
Porter can add to ERRORS, for instance to flag erroneous combinations of FLAVORS (but see ONLY_FOR_ARCHS NOT_FOR_ARCHS and BROKEN for other common issues).
In the normal extraction stage (when EXTRACT_ONLY is not empty), this is the contents of a case statement, used to extract files. Fragments are automatically appended to extract tar, xz and zip archives, so that the default case is more or less equivalent to the following shell fragment: 
set -e
cd ${WRKDIR}
for archive in ${EXTRACT_ONLY}
do
    case $$archive in
	*.tar.xz|*.tar.lzma)
	  xzcat ${FULLDISTDIR}/$$archive| tar xf -;;
	*.tar.lz)
	  lunzip -c ${FULLDISTDIR}/$$archive| tar xf -;;
	*.zip)
	  unzip -q ${FULLDISTDIR}/$$archive -d ${WRKDIR};;
	*.tar.bz2|*.tbz2|*.tbz)
	  bzip2 -dc ${FULLDISTDIR}/$$archive| tar xf -;;
	*.shar.gz|*.shar.Z|*.sh.Z|*.sh.gz)
	  gzcat ${FULLDISTDIR}/$$archive | /bin/sh;;
	*.shar|*.sh)
	  /bin/sh ${FULLDISTDIR}/$$archive;;
	*.tar)
	  tar xf ${FULLDISTDIR}/$$archive;;
	*)
	  gzip -dc ${FULLDISTDIR}/$$archive | tar xf -;;
    esac
done
Set to the list of distfiles to actually extract if some distfiles should not be extracted during the do-extract stage. Defaults to all distfiles, can even be set to empty.
Used to set DISTFILES default value to ${DISTNAME}${EXTRACT_SUFX}. Default value is .tar.gz.
Extra flags passed to ${MAKE_PROGRAM} during the fake invocation. Empty by default. Also see ALL_FAKE_FLAGS.
List of environment values normally set during fake invocations. Exposed so that modules may provide their own do-install. Read-only, see THE FAKE FRAMEWORK section for details.
Target built by ${MAKE_PROGRAM} on fake invocation. Defaults to ${INSTALL_TARGET}.
User settings. If non empty, used as a base for the fake area. The real fake directory ${WRKINST} is created there. Can be set on a per-${PKGPATH} basis. For instance, setting FAKEOBJDIR_www/mozilla=/tmp/obj will affect only the mozilla port.
User settings. Command used to fetch distribution files for this port. Defaults to ftp(1). Can be used to go through excessively paranoid firewalls. Note that FETCH_CMD should support -C and -o dest.
Some ports' distfiles cannot be fetched automatically for licensing reasons. In this case, set FETCH_MANUALLY to a list of strings that will be displayed, one per line, e.g., 
FETCH_MANUALLY= "You must fetch foo-1.0.tgz"
FETCH_MANUALLY+="from http://www.fubar.com/ manually,"
FETCH_MANUALLY+="after reading and agreeing to the license."
Behaves like IS_INTERACTIVE if some distribution files are missing.
User settings. If set to ‘Yes’, the package target will download packages missing from the repository from locations in ${PKG_PATH} and place them into ${PACKAGE_REPOSITORY}/${MACHINE_ARCH}/cache/. It will only build them if no suitable packages are found.
User settings. Set to ‘Yes’ to link distribution files off CDROM_SITE instead of copying them.
Location of other files related to the current port. Default: files.
The port's current options. Set by the user, and tested by the port to activate wanted functionalities.
List of all flavors keywords a port may match. Used to sort FLAVOR into a canonical order to build the package name, or to select the packing-list, and as a quick validity check. See also PSEUDO_FLAVORS.
Canonical list of flavors being set for the current build, dash-separated. See FULLPKGNAME.
User settings. If set to ‘Yes’, the update target will always update an installed package, as soon as its signature differs, and all dependencies that install packages will also force an update. If set to ‘hard’, the update target will also update installed packages even when the signature did not change.
Complete path to directory where ${DISTFILES} and ${PATCHFILES} will be located, to be used in hand-crafted extraction targets. Read-only.
Full name of the created package, taking flavors into account. Defaults to ${PKGNAME}${FLAVOR_EXT}. See also EPOCH and REVISION.
Path to the current port's directory, relative to ${PORTSDIR}, including flavors and subpackages. See pkgpath(7).
, GCC4_ARCHS
List of architectures using gcc 3.3.6, or gcc 4.2.1. Read-only. Use with NOT_FOR_ARCHS or ONLY_FOR_ARCHS to limit ports to architectures where they compile.
Support for GitHub-hosted projects. Leave empty for non hosted projects. Yields a suitable default for MASTER_SITES_GITHUB and DISTNAME.
Account name of the GitHub user hosting the project.
SHA1 commit id to fetch. It is an error to specify ${GH_COMMIT} when ${GH_TAGNAME} is specified.
Name of the project on GitHub.
Name of the tag to download. Setting ${GH_TAGNAME} to master is invalid and will throw an error. ${WRKDIST} is auto-generated based on the ${GH_TAGNAME} if specified, otherwise ${GH_COMMIT} will be used to generate ${WRKDIST}.
Location of the GNU make binary, if needed. Defaults to gmake.
URL to the homepage of the software, if applicable.
For ignored ports, set to the reasons for which the port is ignored. If non-empty, most common targets that do something (e.g., fetch, build, install ...) will be ignored. See also BATCH, BROKEN, FETCH_MANUALLY, IGNORE_IS_FATAL, IGNORE_SILENT, INTERACTIVE, IS_INTERACTIVE, NOT_FOR_ARCHS, NO_IGNORE, ONLY_FOR_ARCHS.
User settings. If set to ‘Yes’, ignored ports will become fatal errors.
User settings. If set to ‘Yes’, do not print anything when ignoring a port.
Macros to use to install a program, a script, data, or a man page (or the corresponding directory), respectively.
Target invoked to install the software, during fake installation. Default is ‘install’.
User settings. Set to ‘Yes’ to skip all non-interactive ports. Used in conjunction with BATCH to simplify bulk-package builds.
Set to ‘Yes’ if port needs human interaction to build. Porters should strive to minimize IS_INTERACTIVE ports, by using FLAVORS for multiple choice ports, and by postponing human intervention to package installation time.
Set to the list of little-endian architectures. Read-only. Use with NOT_FOR_ARCHS and ONLY_FOR_ARCHS.
Libraries this port depends upon. Each item has the form ‘[pkgspec:]pkgpath’. Similar to BUILD_DEPENDS and RUN_DEPENDS, but with specific rules: LIB_DEPENDS always turn into BUILD_DEPENDS.

On architectures that use dynamic libraries, LIB_DEPENDS is also used as a run-time dependency, and recorded in the package as such, if any of the libraries mentioned in WANTLIB is a shared library that originates within the dependent port.

See library-specs(7) for more details.

Controls the behavior of pkg_create(1) related targets, see print-package-args for details.
Location of the libtool binary. Default: /usr/bin/libtool.
Arguments to pass to libtool. If USE_LIBTOOL is set, the environment variable LIBTOOL is set to ${LIBTOOL} ${LIBTOOL_FLAGS}.
where other ports have already been installed. Default: /usr/local.
Location for this port's state directory, should always be derived from BASELOCALSTATEDIR, which defaults to /var. Passed to gnu configure scripts.
User settings. Defaults to ${WRKOBJDIR}/locks. If set, points to a local directory common for all instances of concurrent ports builds.
Expands to a command that will acquire a lock, namely dolock(1). See also ports(7).
User settings. Defaults to ‘No’. Set to ‘Yes’ to show every acquire/release lock operation.
Set to the list of 64-bit architectures. Read-only. Use with NOT_FOR_ARCHS.
Email address with full name of the port's maintainer. Defaults to ports@openbsd.org.
Environment variables passed to make invocations and tests. Sets at least PATH, PREFIX, LOCALBASE, X11BASE, CFLAGS, TRUEPREFIX, DESTDIR, and the BSD_INSTALL_* macros.
Flags used for all make invocations, except for the fake stage, which adds FAKE_FLAGS (see ALL_FAKE_FLAGS) and for the test stage, which adds TEST_FLAGS (see ALL_TEST_FLAGS).
Name of the Makefile used for ports building. Defaults to Makefile. Used after changing directory to ${WRKBUILD}.
The make program that is used for building the port. Set to ${MAKE} or ${GMAKE} depending on USE_GMAKE. Read-only.
Introspection variable, see make(1).
List of all files that need to be retrieved by fetch-all, with DIST_SUBDIR prepended and with master site selection extension removed. Read-only. See also CHECKSUMFILES.
User settings. List of sites to try after normal master sites, or before if MASTER_SITE_OVERRIDE is set to ‘Yes’. Normally includes ${MASTER_SITE_OPENBSD} and ${MASTER_SITE_FREEBSD}.
Lists of standard sites to retrieve files from, refer to ${PORTSDIR}/infrastructure/templates/network.conf.template.
User settings. Set to ‘Yes’ to retrieve distfiles and patchfiles preferentially from the ${MASTER_SITE_BACKUP} sites. Defaults to ‘No’.
List of primary locations from which distribution files and patchfiles are retrieved. See the fetch target for details. Defaults to ${MASTER_SITES_GITHUB} for GitHub-hosted projects, see GH_*. See ports(7) for user configuration.
, ..., MASTER_SITES9
Supplementary locations from which distribution files and patchfiles are retrieved.
File recorded in the package and displayed during installation. Defaults to ${PKGDIR}/MESSAGE if this file exists. Leave empty if no message is needed.
When FETCH_MANUALLY is set, MISSING_FILES will contain the list of missing distfiles or patchfiles that need to be fetched manually. Read-only.
mtree(8) specification to check when creating a PLIST with the update-plist target. MTREE_FILE can hold a list of file names, to which ${PORTSDIR}/infrastructure/db/fake.mtree is always appended. These specifications are rooted at ${WRKINST}, and are subject to SUBST_VARS substitution, to ease ${PREFIX} independence. This feature is primarily intended for large, interconnected ports, such as the kde suite, where a base package sets up a large, extra directory hierarchy that would make the manual checking of packing lists tedious.
If a port uses config.guess outside WRKSRC, the directories containing the other copies must be set here.
If any files have a Perl shebang line, which needs to be replaced with “#!/usr/bin/perl”, list them in MODPERL_ADJ_FILES. File paths here should be relative to WRKSRC. These files are patched automatically at the end of pre-configure.
Shell fragment to patch the Perl interpreter path in executable scripts. Used by MODPERL_ADJ_FILES.
Normal content of do-build when CONFIGURE_STYLE uses perl. Provided as a separate variable if a port wants to override do-build for its own reasons.
Likewise for do-install.
Likewise for do-test.
External modules mechanism, documented separately. Modules such as ‘imake’ and ‘gnu’ are normally included automatically with the right CONFIGURE_STYLE. Note that it is possible to CONFIGURE_STYLE = simple, MODULES += gnu to just get the effects of CONFIG_SITE and MODGNU_CONFIG_GUESS_DIRS along with the default TEST_TARGET, in case the normal GNU configure script was wrapped in a separate script that takes different arguments. See port-modules(5).
Set to a list of subpackage extensions for ports that create multiple packages. See FLAVORS AND MULTI_PACKAGES below. Especially read the part about ONLY_FOR_ARCHS when some of the packages only exist for some architectures.
NO_ARCH
Location for arch-independent packages. Defaults to ‘no-arch’. Normally, packages are generated under ${PACKAGE_REPOSITORY}/${MACHINE_ARCH}, except for packages where PKG_ARCH=*, which end up under ${PACKAGE_REPOSITORY}/${NO_ARCH}.
List of architectures on which this port does not build. See also ONLY_FOR_ARCHS.
Set to ‘Yes’ if port does not need any build stage.
Set to ‘Yes’ to prevent ccache from being used when building a certain port, even when USE_CCACHE is set.
User settings. Set to ‘Yes’ to avoid checksum, makesum, and addsum actions entirely. Beware of the full implications of this mechanism, namely that it disables the basic authentication mechanisms of the ports tree entirely.
User settings. Don't verify build of dependencies. Do not use in any ports Makefile. This is only meant as a user convenience when, e.g., you just want to browse through a given port's source and do not wish to trigger the build of dependencies.
User settings. If set to ‘Yes’, avoid ignoring a port for the usual reasons. Use, for instance, for fetching all distribution files, or for fixing a broken port. See also IGNORE and TRY_BROKEN.
Port does not have any regression tests. Only set to ‘Yes’ for ports with no regression test. It should be left alone for ports with empty regression tests, and for ports with failing tests. That way, if a subsequent update of a port acquires actual regression tests, they will be picked up automatically.
Base name for WRKDIR in the old scheme without WRKOBJDIR. Mostly used as a value for WRKDIR_LINKNAME, e.g., 
WRKDIR_LINKNAME = ${OLD_WRKDIR_NAME}

in /etc/mk.conf. Read-only.

List of architectures on which this port builds. Can hold both processor-specific information (e.g., powerpc), and more specific model information (e.g., macppc). This is subpackage dependent. Read the corresponding part of FLAVORS AND MULTI_PACKAGES if some subpackages should only be built on some architectures.
Revision number of OpenBSD. Read-only.
User settings. Location for built packages. Defaults to ${PORTSDIR}/packages. See package for details.
Command to use to apply all patches. Defaults to /usr/bin/patch.
Suffix used by patch to rename original files, and update-patches to re-generate ${PATCHDIR}/${PATCH_LIST} by looking for files using this suffix. Defaults to .orig. For a port that already contains .orig files in the ${DISTFILES}, set this to something else, such as .pat.orig. See also distpatch, DISTORIG.
In the normal distpatch stage (when PATCHFILES is not empty), this is the contents of a case statement, used to apply distribution patches. Fragments are automatically appended to handle gzip'ed, bzip'ed and lzip'ed patches, so that the default case is more or less equivalent to the following shell fragment: 
set -e
cd ${FULLDISTDIR}
for patchfile in ${_LIST_PATCHFILES}
do
    case $$patchfile in
	*.bz2)
	  bzip2 -dc $$patchfile | ${PATCH} ${PATCH_DIST_ARGS};;
	*.lz)
	  lunzip -c $$patchfile | ${PATCH} ${PATCH_DIST_ARGS};;
	*.Z|*.gz)
	  gzcat $$patchfile | ${PATCH} ${PATCH_DIST_ARGS};;
	*)
	  ${PATCH} ${PATCH_DIST_ARGS} <$$patchfile;;
    esac
done
Location for patches applied by the patch target. Default: patches.
Files to fetch from the master sites like DISTFILES, but serving a different purpose, as they hold distribution patches that will be applied at the patch stage. See also SUPDISTFILES.
Full list of options used while applying port's patches.
Set to ‘Yes’ by the checkpatch target. Don't touch unless the default checkpatch target needs to be redefined. Ideally, user-defined patch subtargets ought to test checkpatch. In practice, they don't.
If set to ‘Yes’, the patch stage will output extra debug information.
Full list of options used while applying distribution patches.
Patch option used to strip directory levels while applying distribution patches. Defaults to -p0 .
Wildcard pattern of patches to select under ${PATCHDIR}. Defaults to patch-*. Note that filenames ending in .orig, or ~ are never applied. Note that PATCH_LIST can hold absolute pathnames, for instance to share patches among similar ports: 
PATCH_LIST=${PORTSDIR}/x11/kde/libs2/patches/p-* patch-*
Patch option used to strip directory levels while applying port's patches. Defaults to -p0 .
, PERMIT_PACKAGE_CDROM, PERMIT_PACKAGE_FTP
Set to ‘Yes’ if package or distribution files can be allowed on FTP sites or CD-ROM without legal issues. Set to reason not to otherwise. PERMIT_* lines in the Makefile should be preceded with a comment explaining details about licensing and patents issues the port may have. Porters must be very thorough in their checks. In case of doubt, ask.

If PERMIT_PACKAGE_CDROM is set to ‘Yes’, PERMIT_PACKAGE_FTP and PERMIT_DISTFILES_FTP will default to ‘Yes’.

If PERMIT_PACKAGE_FTP is set to ‘Yes’, PERMIT_DISTFILES_FTP will default to ‘Yes’.

User settings. Path to pkg_add(1) command, with possible options.
Comma-separated list of architectures on which this package may install. Defaults to ${MACHINE_ARCH},${ARCH}. Use * for arch-independent packages.
Special arguments to pass to pkg_create(1), in addition to the default ones. For mips64 and pic libraries, see THE GENERATION OF PACKAGE INFORMATION.
User settings. Path to pkg_create(1) command, with possible options. Signing options should be set separately in SIGNING_PARAMETERS.
Porters switch. Set to ‘Yes’ to avoid checking the ports tree when solving WANTLIB (see wantlib-args). May result in bogus packages that mix @depends lines obtained from the ports tree with @wantlib lines that come from the installed system. Set to ‘Warn’ to have the differences printed as a warning instead of an error (the default).
User settings. Path to package installation records. Defaults to /var/db/pkg.
User settings. Path to pkg_delete(1) command, with possible options.
User settings. Path to pkg_info(1) command, with possible options.
See pkg_add(1). Normally points to /var/tmp, as per default.
Setting of env variable HOME for most shell invocations. Default will trip ports that try to write into $HOME while building.
Path used by most shell invocations. Don't override unless really needed.
Root of the ports tree (default: /usr/ports).
Path used by dependencies and bsd.port.subdir.mk to look up package specifications. Defaults to ${PORTSDIR}:${PORTSDIR}/mystuff.
Location for packaging information (packing list, port description, messages). Default: pkg.
Full path to the created package for the given subpackage. Read-only.
Full path to all created packages. Read-only.
Name of the created package. Default is ${DISTNAME}. This does not take flavors into account. See FULLPKGNAME for that. Specific revisions and epoch changes should be handled by REVISION and EPOCH instead.
Read-only. List of all package names generated by the port, with FLAVORS and BUILD_PACKAGES taken into account. Mostly used as ‘make show=PKGNAMES’ to verify that bumped package names are correct.
Package name for sub-package foo, if the default value of ${PKGNAME}${SUBPACKAGE} is not appropriate.
Path to the current port's directory, relative to ${PORTSDIR}. Read-only.
Read-only. List of all package paths generated by the port, with FLAVORS and MULTI_PACKAGES taken into account. Order matches PKGNAMES exactly.
Default package spec for using this port as a dependency. Defaults to ‘stem-*’, derived from the FULLPKGNAME. Do not override without very good reasons, namely software that coexist as different incompatible versions with the same stem, e.g., already a mess.
Deprecated, see PLIST_REPOSITORY.
User settings. Base directory used to save generated packing-lists, as persistent information. Packing-lists are processed by a script, register-plist(1), which complains when packing-lists change without a REVISION bump. It also knows enough about package version numbers when something in the package or its dependencies goes backward, thus catching EPOCH issues. This directory is never cleaned during normal operation. ‘make clean=plist’ should only ever be used during debugging by port maintainers. Defaults to ${PORTSDIR}/plist (plists actually get saved into ${PLIST_REPOSITORY}/${MACHINE_ARCH}). If set to empty, will not register anything: very much unsafe.
EXPERIMENTAL. Set to ‘Yes’ to build xenocara through ports. This is highly experimental and not recommended.
Controls the behavior of misc/portroach as documented in detail at http://jasperla.github.io/portroach/docs/portroach-portconfig.txt .
List of cryptographic ciphers to use, in order of preference. Default is ‘sha256’. The first cipher that matches in ${CHECKSUM_FILE} is verified.
Base directory for the current port installation. Usually ${LOCALBASE}, though some ports may elect a location under ${VARBASE}, and some multi-package ports may install under several locations. Additionally, firmware files generally install under ${BASESYSCONFDIR}.
Build settings. Prevent the prepare stage from installing anything, let it just check dependencies, and handle [:target] dependencies. Mostly used by dpb(1), which already installs everything before running prepare.
User-settings. Defaults to ‘Yes’. Forces commands like ftp(1) and pkg_create(1) to use their progress-meter even in the absence of a terminal.
List of properties specific to a given machine architecture. Most often obtained through bsd.port.arch.mk(5). These can be checked like this 
.include <bsd.port.arch.mk>
.if ${PROPERTIES:Mapm}
# then add build options specific to apm arches
...
.if !${PROPERTIES:Mlp64}
# build options specific to lp32 arches
...
For MULTI_PACKAGES setup, use of ONLY_FOR_ARCHS-sub and BUILD_PACKAGES is generally preferred (and simpler). Possible properties include
apm
architecture possesses suspend (apm) support.
be
architecture is big-endian.
gccN
gccN architecture.
le
architecture is little-endian.
lp64
lp64 architecture.
llvm
there is lang/llvm support on this architecture.
mono
there is lang/mono support on this architecture.
List of flavors in FLAVOR that are actually pseudo-flavors. Only for introspection purposes. Read-only.
Extra list of flavors that do not register in package names, but are still used to control build logic, and work directory names. Its only use should be for disabling part of a multi-packages build, for instance: 
FLAVOR=no_gnome make package

Pseudo-flavors should be named as ‘no_something’ to disable the build of subpackage ‘-something’ (and possibly some others, by restricting BUILD_PACKAGES). Pseudo-flavors should always be handled through bsd.port.arch.mk(5). A pseudo-flavor can remove several subpackages through the following construct.

# pseudo-flavor no_gui will also remove gtk and gtk3
MULTI_PACKAGES = -main -gtk -gtk3 -gui
# ...
.include <bsd.port.arch.mk>

# remove extra build components
.if !${BUILD_PACKAGES:M-gui}
BUILD_PACKAGES := ${BUILD_PACKAGES:N-gtk:N-gtk3}
.endif

# normal configure setup, e.g.,
.if ${BUILD_PACKAGES:M-gtk}
# ...

Caveat: creation of a separate working directory is mandatory for a pseudo-flavor. If, at a later time, a full build with all subpackages is required, all the work will need to be done again.

See also BUILD_ONCE.

Location for daemon startup scripts. Defaults to /etc/rc.d. Do not change.
See mirroring-ports(7).
User settings. If set to true, checksum will analyze ${CHECKSUM_FILE}, and try retrieving files with the correct checksum off ftp.openbsd.org, in the directory /pub/OpenBSD/distfiles/$cipher/$value/$file.
Points to a list of files that specify inter-dependencies for make(1). If defined, each line of the file is either a comment (starting with #) or a pair of two files: most_recent older. At the end of post-patch, touch(1) will be used to ensure those files are put in the proper order. The files are assumed to be under ${WRKSRC}. The notation /file can be used to ask for a recursive search, e.g., to make sure that all Makefile.in are up-to-date. See ${PORTSDIR}/infrastructure/mk/automake.dep for an example.
See ports(7).
See ports(7).
Revision number of the current package. Defaults to empty (very first package), then numbering starts at 0. Gets automatically incorporated into FULLPKGNAME as ‘p${REVISION}’ to form a full package-name conforming to packages-specs(7).
Specification of ports this port needs installed to be functional. Same format as LIB_DEPENDS. The corresponding packages will be built right before the install stage, and pkg_add(1) will take care of installing them.
Many GNU configure ports can be built in a directory distinct from the place they were unpacked. For some specific ports, this is even mandatory. Set to ‘yes’ or ‘simple’ if this is the case. The ports infrastructure will generate a separate ${WRKBUILD} directory in which the port will be configured and built. Wipe ${WRKBUILD} to start anew, but skipping the extract/patch stage.
Normally set to /usr/bin/env -i. Prepended to every command invocation that requires a clean environment. Do not override.
List of shared libraries that the port may build, as a list of the form ‘libname’ ‘libversion’. Used to set variables of the form LIBlibname_VERSION that are then used for substitution by pkg_create(1). The porter is responsible for making sure the port uses those version numbers when shared libraries are built.

The intent is that the OpenBSD ports system must have control over shared library versions because of global changes that may require bumping the major version of every shared library in the system, or simply because the third party programmers do not understand the rules for shared library versions, thus breaking the update mechanism. For that reason it is advised to set libversion to 0.0 when first importing a port.

Porters of software using libtool should make sure MAKE_FLAGS get propagated to the libtool invocations. This should be enough in most cases.

User settings. Set to pkg_create(1) options for signing packages directly during their creation.
See ports(7).
Normally set to ‘yes’. Can be set to no for ports that do not have a static plist. Do not change without a very good reason. Note that the only good reason to not have a static plist is for ports such as databases/ports-readmes which actually build a bunch of files depending on the current ports tree. This breaks all introspection mechanisms within the ports tree, including databases/pkglocatedb which will not include that port.
See ports(7).
See ports(7).
Set to the subpackage suffix when building a package in a multi-package port. Read-only. Used to test for dependencies or to adjust the package name.
A command that can be used to perform SUBST_VARS substitution on arbitrary files. In normal mode,

${SUBST_CMD} file1 file2 ...

will substitute files in place, creating backup copies of them. In copy mode,

${SUBST_CMD} -c src1 dest1 src2 dest2

will copy files over while performing the substitution, as suitable for copying template files over from ${FILESDIR} to ${PREFIX}, for instance. This uses pkg_subst(1) with suitable parameters. Read-only.

${SUBST_CMD} can be used like install(1):

${SUBST_CMD} [-g group] [-o owner] [-m mode] file...
to set file owner, group and/or mode.

Note that SUBST_CMD is not really appropriate when variables have subpackage variations, like PREFIX or FULLPKGNAME. Use the appropriate SUBST_CMD-sub instead.

with subpackage-dependent semantics, like packing-list substitution. It will substitute the right variable depending on the desired subpackage, e.g., SUBST_CMD-foo will substitute the value of FULLPKGNAME-foo for ${FULLPKGNAME}.
, SUBST_MAN, SUBST_PROGRAM
Specialized versions of SUBST_CMD that use -c and appropriate owner/group/mode for data, manpages and programs respectively.
Make variables whose values get substituted to create the actual package information. Always holds ARCH, BASE_PKGPATH, FLAVOR_EXT, FULLPKGNAME, HOMEPAGE, LOCALBASE, MACHINE_ARCH, MAINTAINER, PREFIX, RCDIR, SYSCONFDIR, TRUEPREFIX, and X11BASE. The special construct ‘${FLAVORS}’ can be used in the packing-list to specify the current list of dash separated flavors the port is compiled with (useful for cross-dependencies in MULTI_PACKAGES). Add other variables as needed. Some variable names are prefixed by a ^. This is only relevant for update-plist, where it means the variable will only be substituted at the beginning of a path.
User settings. If set to doas(1) in mk.conf(5), the ports tree will only invoke root's privileges for the parts that really require it.
Supplementary files that need to be retrieved under some specific circumstances. For instance, a port might need architecture-specific files. SUPDISTFILES should hold a list of all distribution files and patchfiles that are not always needed, so that a mirror will be able to grab all files, or that makesum will work. Having an overlap between SUPDISTFILES and DISTFILES, PATCHFILES is admissible, and in fact, expected, as it is much simpler to build an error-free list of files to retrieve in that way. See the xanim port for an example.
Location for this port's configuration files, should always be derived from BASESYSCONFDIR, which defaults to /etc. Passed to gnu configure scripts and substituted in PLISTs.
Name of the tar binary.
Read-only. Set to the list of special targets for a port ({pre,do,post}-* and module hooks). Used by introspection tools such as the sqlports package.
Base location for the templates used in the readmes target. User settings. Defaults to ${PORTSDIR}/infrastructure/templates.
See BUILD_DEPENDS for specification. Test dependencies are only checked if the test stage is invoked.
Additional environment variables passed to tests. Empty by default.
Extra flags passed to ${MAKE_PROGRAM} to run the regression tests. Empty by default.
Set to ‘Yes’ if port needs human interaction to run its tests, or set to ‘X11’ if the tests need an active X11 display to work.
Command used to log the results of regression tests to TEST_LOGFILE.
Log file containing the results of regression tests.
Target to run regression tests. Defaults to ‘regress’, except for ‘perl’ and ‘gnu’ CONFIGURE_STYLE, which default to ‘test’ and ‘check’, respectively.
Read-only. Mostly the same as ${PREFIX}, except it never gets ${DESTDIR} prepended during fake. Refer to THE FAKE FRAMEWORK section for details.
User settings. If set to ‘Yes’, don't set IGNORE for BROKEN ports, so that we will attempt to build them.
User settings. If set, expands to a command that will release a lock. This lock will reside in ${LOCKDIR}.
File recorded in the package and displayed during deinstallation. Defaults to ${PKGDIR}/UNMESSAGE if this file exists. Leave empty if no message is needed.
Name of the unzip binary.
User settings. Used to store cookies for package updates and defaults to ${PORTSDIR}/update/${MACHINE_ARCH}. If set to empty, will revert to a file under ${WRKDIR}.
User settings. Set to ‘Yes’ to use ccache when building ports. Adds a build dependency on devel/ccache, and sets up the build environment so that it is used.
Set to ‘Yes’ if GNU make (${GMAKE}) is needed for correct behavior of this port.
Set to ‘Yes’ to use groff to build manpages. This sets groff as a build dependency, and also tells pkg_create(1) to format manpages behind the scene using groff while building packages.
Defaults to ‘Yes’. Set to ‘gnu’ if the base libtool(1) is insufficient and GNU libtool is required. Set to ‘No’ to disable the use of libtool(1) entirely; this should not be set under normal circumstances. Adds dependencies if necessary, and passes LIBTOOL environment variable to scripts invocations.
Set to ‘Yes’ to build ports under an MFS filesystem (see mount_mfs(8)). Mostly for use by dpb(1) and not intended to be a user setting. See WRKOBJDIR_MFS for configuration.
Normally, presence of ${X11BASE} is enforced by default for building ports. But there is an experimental way to hook the xenocara build into dpb(1), which requires knowing whether a port requires X11 to already be there.

The infrastructure mostly sets USE_X11 automatically based on WANTLIB values, there are a few ports (about 20) that require X11 components without any library telltale.

User settings. Base location for ports that install stuff outside of ${LOCALBASE}. Defaults to /var.
Extra list of library specifications that a package will need. May include system and X11 libraries. See library-specs(7) for more details.

As a special extension, WANTLIB may include absolute paths, e.g., ${LOCALBASE}/lib/expat.=4 to distinguish between base libraries and port libraries. Use with caution, this is very seldom needed.

Controls the behavior of pkg_create(1) related targets, see print-package-args for details.
User settings. If set to ‘Yes’, add CDIAGFLAGS to CFLAGS and CXXDIAGFLAGS to CXXFLAGS.
Subdirectory of ${WRKDIR} where the actual build occurs. Defaults to ${WRKSRC}, unless SEPARATE_BUILD is involved, in which case it is set to an appropriate value.
Subdirectory of ${WRKDIR} where the actual configure set occurs. Defaults to ${WRKBUILD}.
Location where all port activity occurs. Apart from the actual port, may hold all kinds of cookies that checkpoint the port's build. Read-only. Note that WRKDIR may be a symbolic link. During ports building, ${WRKDIR}/bin is put at the front of the PATH.
Name of a symbolic link to create within the port directory which will point to the port's ${WRKDIR}. See OLD_WRKDIRNAME.
Subdirectory of ${WRKDIR} in which the distribution files normally unpack. Base for all patches. Defaults to ${WRKDIR}/${DISTNAME}. Note that WRKDIST may be a symbolic link, if set to ${WRKDIR}.
Subdirectory of ${WRKDIR} where the actual source is. Base for configuration (default: ${WRKDIST}). Note that WRKSRC may be a symbolic link, if set to ${WRKDIR}.
Subdirectory of ${WRKDIR} where port normally installs (see the fake target).
Used as a base for the actual port working directory. Defaults to ${PORTSDIR}/pobj. The real working directory ${WRKDIR} is created there. Can be set on a per-${PKGPATH} basis. For instance, setting WRKOBJDIR_www/mozilla=/tmp/obj will affect only the mozilla port. If explicitly unset (WRKOBJDIR=), the working directory is created within the port directory.
Alternate location for the port working directory. The intent is to use an MFS based filesystem for small ports with dpb(1). Active when USE_MFS is ‘Yes’. Defaults to /tmp/pobj.
Where X11 has been installed. Default: /usr/X11R6.
Points to a suitable authority file for X11 interactive regression tests. Defaults to ${HOME}/.xauthority.
Invocation of xmkmf for a CONFIGURE_STYLE=imake port. Defaults to xmkmf -a -DPorts. The -DPorts is specific to OpenBSD and is always appended.
Name of yacc program to pass to GNU-configure, defaults to yacc. GNU-configure would always try to use bison otherwise, which leads to unreproducible builds. Set to bison if needed.

Note that some of these messages are actually emitted by some other external commands, but grouped here for convenience: easier to look for in dpb(1)'s logs.

Discovered old directory in ...
This message comes from make-plist(1). A directory was found in the PLIST that used to be needed but is no longer, because it's now accounted for through dependencies. Indicates the old directory has been removed.
Error: change in plist between ...
Error message comes from register-plist(1).
Error: duplicate item in packing-list
Error message comes from pkg_create(1), and will result from incorrect packing-lists, such as including several fragments with the same file, or having incorrect PKG_ARGS-sub.
Error: Libraries in packing-lists...and libraries from installed packages don't match
The ports tree and the installed packages are out-of-sync. Mixing library information from both sources might produce packages that can't be installed elsewhere. Cleanest fix is to update the out-of-date source (e.g., update the ports tree, or build and install new packages). Developers may use PKG_CREATE_NO_CHECKS instead, assuming they understand the implications. See print-package-args (wantlib-args) for details.
Fatal: can't flavor a SUBDIR
A dependency mentions top_subdir,flavor. Flavor would then be ignored, as it is only applied to individual ports.
Fatal: can't subpackage a SUBDIR
A dependency mentions top_subdir,-sub. Subpackage would then be ignored, as it is only applied to individual ports.
Fatal: flavor should never start with a digit
This would utterly confuse pkg_add(1). See packages-specs(7).
Fatal: inclusion of <file> from <file>
bsd.port.mk or bsd.port.subdir.mk has been included from a MODULE or from Makefile.inc, resulting in a double inclusion. This would lead to weird results, such as PKG_ARGS being defined twice.
Fatal: SUBPACKAGES should always begin with -: <offending list>
That is the only way to differentiate between FLAVOR and SUBPACKAGE in pkgpath(7) specifications.
Fatal: building ports requires correctly installed X11
All file sets of the base OS, including xenocara, must be installed before building ports.
Fatal: /usr/local/lib/X11/app-defaults should exist and be a symlink
/usr/local/lib/X11/app-defaults is distributed as a symlink in the xshare*.tgz file set. If xenocara was not fully installed before packages were added, it may have been created as a directory instead.
Fatal: the licensing info for <pkgname> is incomplete...
Every port must have explicit defines of all PERMIT_* values.
Fatal: Use 'env FLAVOR=flavor make' instead
Arguments specified after make(1) are hardcoded for all recursive sub-makes, and very difficult to override. Thus, FLAVOR must be specified in the environment instead.
Fatal: Use 'env SUBPACKAGE=-sub make' instead
Arguments specified after make(1) are hardcoded for all recursive sub-makes, and very difficult to override. Thus, SUBPACKAGE must be specified in the environment instead.
ldconfig: <dir>: No such file or directory
Usually produced by pkg_add(1) running ldconfig(8). Some tools such as GNU libtool will add directories living under ${WRKINST} to the shared library path during the fake stage. Of course, ldconfig(8) will later complain after the directory no longer exists. The bogus tool should be fixed to conform to OpenBSD usage.
LIB_DEPENDS <spec> not needed for <FULLPKGPATH>
There doesn't seem to be any WANTLIB to match the given LIB_DEPENDS. Thus, the LIB_DEPENDS won't turn into a @depends line in the created package. This is often because of confusion between LIB_DEPENDS and RUN_DEPENDS: RUN_DEPENDS is needed for dlopen'd libraries.

Might be intentional sometimes, if some compile flavors create static binaries, for instance. Also, will happen for multi-packages, where one sets LIB_DEPENDS to have a given build dependency (and corresponding WANTLIB for a given SUBPACKAGE).

See print-package-args (lib-depends-args) for details.

Warning: FULLPKGNAME-sub defined but not FULLPKGPATH-sub
has been explicitly defined by the port, instead of relying on the default, but no value of FULLPKGPATH-sub has been given. This is often an error.
Warning: symlink(s) point to non existent file.
Warning message comes from pkg_create(1). The symlink resides in the fake area, under ${WRKINST}. This is only a warning because the symlink may point to a run-time dependency, which obviously won't exist under ${WRKINST} at the time ‘make package’ is run.
Warning: @option no-default-conflict with no @conflict
Warning message comes from pkg_create(1). Most packages that waive "default-conflict" will have explicit conflict markers instead. Otherwise, the package will only conflict with the exact same version, with some possible REVISION bumps. Any other version or FLAVOR won't conflict. This is generally an error, apart from very few ports like devel/autoconf/*.
groff produced empty result for <manpage>...
Warning message comes from pkg_create(1). Manpages are automatically formatted with groff(1) if USE_GROFF is set. The above message denotes an actual problem while formatting the page, which should be addressed. In the meantime, pkg_create(1) still produces a package, but leaves the manpage unformatted, in the hope that something will be able to make sense of it.

../Makefile.inc
Common Makefile fragment for a set of ports, included automatically.
/cdrom/distfiles
Default path to a CD-ROM (or other media) full of distribution files.
${DISTDIR}
Cache of all distribution files.
distinfo
Checksum file. Holds the output of cksum(1), using ${PREFERRED_CIPHERS}, for the port's ${DISTFILES} and ${PATCHFILES}, as well as the sizes of these files.
${DISTDIR}/${CHECKSUMFILES}
Cache of normal distribution files for a given port.
${DISTDIR}/${MAKESUMFILES}
Cache of all distribution files for a given port.
${PKGDIR}/DESCR
Description for the port. Variables such as ${HOMEPAGE} and ${MAINTAINER} will be expanded (see SUBST_VARS). Multi-package ports will use DESCR${SUBPACKAGE}.
${PKGDIR}/README
OpenBSD specific documentation for a port, that will be installed as ${LOCALBASE}/share/doc/pkg-readmes/${FULLPKGNAME} at the end of fake. Variables from SUBST_VARS will be expanded. Multi-package ports will use README${SUBPACKAGE}.
${PKGDIR}/<foo>.rc
Startup script for <foo>. Will be installed as ${RCDIR}/<foo> at the end of fake. Variables from SUBST_VARS will be expanded.
${PORTSDIR}/infrastructure/db/fake.mtree
Specification used for populating ${WRKINST} at the start of fake. Use pre-fake if this is incomplete.
${PORTSDIR}/packages/${MACHINE_ARCH}
Default setup of ${PACKAGE_REPOSITORY}.
${PACKAGE_REPOSITORY}/no-arch
Location of arch-independent packages.
${PACKAGE_REPOSITORY}/${MACHINE_ARCH}/all
Location of all built packages.
${PACKAGE_REPOSITORY}/${MACHINE_ARCH}/cache
Location of packages retrieved through the network.
${PACKAGE_REPOSITORY}/${MACHINE_ARCH}/cksums
Location of checksums, see CHECKSUM_PACKAGES.
${PACKAGE_REPOSITORY}/${MACHINE_ARCH}/cdrom
Location of packages suitable for the CD.
${PACKAGE_REPOSITORY}/${MACHINE_ARCH}/ftp
Location of packages suitable for FTP.
${PORTSDIR}/bulk/${MACHINE_ARCH}
Default setup of ${BULK_COOKIES_DIR}.
${PORTSDIR}/update/${MACHINE_ARCH}
Default setup of ${UPDATE_COOKIES_DIR}.
${PORTSDIR}/mystuff
Extra directory used to store local ports before committing them. All depend targets will normally look there after the normal lookup fails. See PORTSDIR_PATH.

The fake target is used to install the port in a private directory first, ready for packaging by the package target, so that the actual installation will use the package.

Essentially, fake invokes a real install process after tweaking a few variables.

fake first creates a skeleton tree under ${WRKINST}, using the mtree(8) specification ${PORTSDIR}/infrastructure/db/fake.mtree.

A pre-fake target may be used to complete that skeleton tree. For instance, a few ports may need supplementary stuff to be present (as it would be installed if the port's dependencies were present).

If {pre,do,post}-install overrides are present, they are used with some important changes, listed in FAKE_SETUP:

TRUEPREFIX=${PREFIX}
PREFIX=${WRKINST}${PREFIX}
${DESTDIRNAME}=${WRKINST}

Essentially, old install targets work transparently, except for a need to change PREFIX to TRUEPREFIX for symbolic links and similar path lookups. Specific traditional post install work can be simply removed, as it will be taken care of by the package itself (for instance, ldconfig, or texinfo's install-info).

If no do-install override is present, the port is installed using

env -i ${MAKE_ENV} ${FAKE_SETUP} ${MAKE_PROGRAM} ${ALL_FAKE_FLAGS} -f ${MAKE_FILE} ${FAKE_TARGET}

Note that this does set both PREFIX and ${DESTDIRNAME}. If a port's Makefile both heeds ${DESTDIRNAME}, and references PREFIX explicitly, FAKE_FLAGS may rectify the problem by setting PREFIX=${PREFIX} (which will do the right thing, since ${PREFIX} is a make(1) construct which will not be seen by the shell).

${FAKE_FLAGS} is used to set variables on make(1) command line, which will override the port Makefile contents. Thus, a port that mentions DESTDIR= does not need any patch to work with fake.

Files such as ${PKGDIR}/README* or ${PKGDIR}/*.rc get copied to ${WRKINST} at the end of fake (see the FILES section above for details).

Starting with OpenBSD 2.7, each port can generate distinct packages through two orthogonal mechanisms: FLAVORS and MULTI_PACKAGES.

The current MULTI_PACKAGES mechanism was introduced after OpenBSD 4.0.

The arch-dependent part was refined after OpenBSD 5.0.

If a port can be compiled with several options, these options should be turned into FLAVORS. The port maintainer will set FLAVORS to be the list of possible options in the Makefile. When building the port, the package builder will set FLAVOR='option1 option2...' to build a specific flavor of the port. The Makefile should test the value of FLAVOR as follows:

FLAVOR?=
.if ${FLAVOR:Moption1}
# what to do if option1
.endif
.if ${FLAVOR:Moption2}
# what to do if option2
.endif

bsd.port.mk takes care of a few details, such as generating a distinct work directory for each flavor, or creating a FULLPKGNAME by adding a dash separated list of flavors to the base package name. The order in which FLAVOR is specified does not matter: this dash separated list will be reordered to match the ordering of FLAVORS.

It is an error to specify an option in FLAVOR that does not appear in FLAVORS, to prevent misspellings.

In bulk package building, flavors can be specified as a comma separated list after the package directory, e.g., SUBDIR+=vim,no_x11 (see pkgpath(7))

Finally, package information will use templates with the canonical package extension if they are available: if FLAVOR='option1 option2' and both COMMENT and COMMENT-option1-option2 are available, COMMENT-option1-option2 will be used.

If one build of a port can generate several distinct packages, set MULTI_PACKAGES accordingly. Each extension of a MULTI_PACKAGES name should start with a dash, so that they cannot be confused with FLAVORS. In dependency checking and bulk builds, a subpackage can be specified after a comma, e.g., SUBDIR+=quake,-server. MULTI_PACKAGES only affects the actual package building step (and the describe step, since a MULTI_PACKAGES port will produce several descriptions).

If MULTI_PACKAGES is set, the packaging stage happens once for every subpackage, using subpackage-specific variables. For instance, if MULTI_PACKAGES=-main -lib -server, PKG_ARCH-main, PKG_ARCH-lib and PKG_ARCH-server will be used for the subpackages respectively called FULLPKGNAME-main, FULLPKGNAME-lib and FULLPKGNAME-server.

All package information is also derived from templates with SUBPACKAGE appended. In the preceding example, the packing-list template for FULLPKGNAME-lib must be in PLIST-lib.

The following variables are subpackage dependent: COMMENT, PKG_ARCH, PERMIT_PACKAGE_FTP, PERMIT_PACKAGE_CDROM, PKGFILE, PKGNAME, FULLPKGNAME, REVISION, EPOCH, FULLPKGPATH, RUN_DEPENDS, WANTLIB, LIB_DEPENDS, IGNORE, ONLY_FOR_ARCHS, NOT_FOR_ARCHS, PKG_ARGS, PREFIX, CATEGORIES, MESSAGE, UNMESSAGE, DESCR, PLIST, STATIC_PLIST, PKGSPEC.

The usual non-MULTI_PACKAGES variables are simply used as default values for all subpackages. So, if you set PKG_ARCH=* PKG_ARCH-main=i386 then PKG_ARCH-lib and PKG_ARCH-server will both be ‘*’.

WANTLIB and LIB_DEPENDS are special. At the beginning of the build, during prepare, all build dependencies will be checked, which includes LIB_DEPENDS, WANTLIB for every subpackage. As an exception, any LIB_DEPENDS-sub that references the current port will be ignored as a build dependency, in order to avoid recursion.

FULLPKGPATH and FULLPKGNAME are special as well. You must set PKGNAME-sub or FULLPKGNAME-sub for each subpackage, but FULLPKGPATH-sub is set automatically to the right value. In very rare cases, one may override FULLPKGPATH-sub. (for instance, if one specific subpackage is not affected by option settings that affect other subpackages, e.g., for include files packs).

In terms of using the port, quite a few targets will have a subpackage specific subtarget: invoking package is the same as invoking subpackage for all subpackages, invoking install-all is the same as invoking install for all subpackages, and invoking update is the same as invoking subupdate for all subpackages.

ONLY_FOR_ARCHS and NOT_FOR_ARCHS interact with MULTI_PACKAGES and IGNORE. The infrastructure will automatically filter subpackages that are not suitable for the current architecture. Thus, MULTI_PACKAGES should always list all subpackages, even things not buildable on the current architecture, for indexing purposes.

Starting with OpenBSD 5.1, bsd.port.arch.mk(5) should be used to simplify the handling of MULTI_PACKAGES in arch-dependent setups:

Make sure MULTI_PACKAGES, ONLY_FOR_ARCHS*, and PSEUDO_FLAVORS are defined correctly, then

.include <bsd.port.arch.mk>

This will compute BUILD_PACKAGES, the list of actual subpackages to build with the current setup, by taking arch constraints and pseudo-flavors into account. Then test BUILD_PACKAGES to set up the right configuration, e.g., to check if SUBPACKAGE -mono should be built:

.if ${BUILD_PACKAGES:M-mono}

The lang/gcc/4.9 or print/poppler ports should provide examples of proper use.

Note that dpb(1) will break if all subpackages are not properly listed.

Starting after OpenBSD 4.1 all package information is processed directly by pkg_create(1) from templates in ${PKG_DIR}.

Note that ${COMMENT} is currently not substituted, to speed up describe generation.

To avoid substitution, variables can be escaped as follows: $\{PREFIX}

If FLAVORS lists flv, then constructs such as the line %%flv%% or !%%flv%% in the packing-list template trigger the inclusion of ${PKGDIR}/PFRAG.flv${SUBPACKAGE} or ${PKGDIR}/PFRAG.no-flv${SUBPACKAGE}. Other fragments can be defined by simply adding -Dfrag=1 or -Dfrag=0 to PKG_ARGS.

If libraries are built using bsd.lib.mk, special care should be taken for mips64* architectures, which do not ever build *pic.a files (all mips code is pic already). bsd.port.mk automatically adds -Dno_mips64=1 or -Dno_mips64=0 to PKG_ARGS, and the porter only needs to provide the appropriate fragment.

pkg_add(1) now calls ldconfig(8) directly, provided dynamic libraries have been annotated with @lib libthingy.so.5.0. Adding new directories to the dynamic loader cache has been deprecated. It is often better to let libraries be visible as a link under ${LOCALBASE}. Having a separate directory is enough to trick ld(1) into grabbing the right version. Libraries used only for dlopen(3) do not need to be visible. Some programs will prefer to use rpath to find their own libraries.

The special update-plist target does a fairly good job of automatically generating the PLIST.

If PLIST_REPOSITORY points to a directory, all packing-lists from packages generated by pkg_create(1) during the package stage are saved in ${PLIST_REPOSITORY}/${MACHINE_ARCH} by a script: ${PORTSDIR}/infrastructure/bin/register-plist. This script strips some irrelevant information and normalizes the packing-list somehow, and compares it to existing information, looking for relevant changes. Since a package name must always be changed when the packing-list changes, any attempt to replace a packing-list of a given name with a different packing-list will be flagged as an error.

In MULTI_PACKAGES mode, there must be separate COMMENT, DESCR, and PLIST templates for each SUBPACKAGE (and optional distinct MESSAGE, UNMESSAGE files in a similar way). This contrasts with the FLAVORS situation, where all these files will automatically default to the non-flavor version if there is no flavor-specific file around.

, ftp-packages
Links are now created during the package target.
Renamed into full-build-depends.
Don't override. Set EXTRACT_ONLY to nothing and override post-extract instead.
These prevented bulk mechanisms from running properly.
There is no port that requires special treatment during packaging, as {pre,do,post}-install should take care of every necessity.
, mirror-distfiles, fetch-makefile
See mirroring-ports(7) for more efficient and flexible ways to build mirrors.
Starting with OpenBSD 3.3, using WRKOBJDIR no longer creates a symlink between the current directory and a subdirectory of ${WRKOBJDIR}, so obj is no longer applicable.
Use print-build-depends and print-run-depends instead.
Renamed into print-build-depends.
Renamed into print-run-depends.
Renamed into print-update-signature.
, readmes
replaced by the databases/ports-readmes port, using the Template Toolkit (textproc/p5-Template) instead of hand-coded substitutions.

Old user settings. The infrastructure always trusts the repository to contain correct packages. So, if the package name did not change and if it exists in the repository, it will not be rebuilt without manual user action.
List of formatted manpages, per section.
Location for storing formatted manpages. Derived directly from PREFIX.
Old user settings. Base location where packages suitable for a CD-ROM (see PERMIT_PACKAGE_CDROM) will be placed. Now hardwired to ${PACKAGE_REPOSITORY}/${MACHINE_ARCH}/cdrom.
Used to be the name of the comment file for a package. It now holds the comment itself. Some magic has been put in to allow for a seamless transition.
Used to default to --enable-shared or --disable-shared, depending on whether the architecture supported shared libraries.
From NetBSD. This is DESCR. OpenBSD does not give a specific name to the generated file. It is not recommended to try to access it directly.
Was used to cobble together the normal extraction command, as ${EXTRACT_CMD} ${EXTRACT_BEFORE_ARGS} ${EXTRACT_AFTER_ARGS}. Use EXTRACT_CASES instead.
Likewise, use EXTRACT_CASES instead.
Likewise, use EXTRACT_CASES instead.
, FETCH_AFTER_ARGS
Set FETCH_CMD to point to a script that does any required special treatment instead.
Used to specify dependencies that were needed to fetch files. It is much easier to mirror locally weird distribution files.
User settings. Base location where packages suitable for FTP (see PERMIT_PACKAGE_FTP) will be placed. Now hardwired to ${PACKAGE_REPOSITORY}/${MACHINE_ARCH}/ftp.
Use CONFIGURE_STYLE instead.
Use CONFIGURE_STYLE instead.
Set to the list of files that can't be checksummed. All uses of it have led to postponing the correct action: talking to the software author and getting him to provide versioned archives.
List of unformatted manpages, per section.
Location for storing unformatted manpages. Derived directly from PREFIX.
From FreeBSD. Used to organize a collection of ports that share most files. OpenBSD uses a single port with flavors or multi-packages to produce package variations instead.
Contents were used to replace ‘%SUBDIR%’ in all MASTER_SITES variables. Since ‘%SUBDIR%’ almost always occur at the end of the directory, the simpler ${VARIABLE:=subdir/} construct is now used instead (taken from NetBSD).
Use CHECKSUM_FILE instead.
Use PERMIT_DISTFILES_FTP to determine which files can be mirrored instead. See mirroring-ports(7).
Used to set a requirement on a specific revision of bsd.port.mk needed by a port. No longer needed as bsd.port.mk should always be kept up-to-date.
If ${CONFIGURE_SCRIPT} does not exist, no automatic configuration will be done anyway.
All ports should generate a description.
Set EXTRACT_ONLY= instead.
Use CONFIGURE_STYLE instead.
Starting with OpenBSD 2.7, the operating system installation script runs the /usr/local specification globally, instead of embedding it in each package. So packages no longer record an mtree(8) specification. Use an explicit ‘@exec’ command if needed.
All ports should generate a package, preferably before install.
The absence of a patches directory does the same. Use PATCHDIR and PATCH_LIST if patches need to be changed dynamically.
Used to be set to the list of platforms that did not support shared libraries. No such architectures remain.
Used to be set to ‘Yes’ if platform did not support shared libraries.
All ports should have a working directory, as this is necessary to store cookies and keep state.
The same functionality is obtained by setting WRKDIST=${WRKDIR} .
Use CLEANDEPENDS instead.
FreeBSD ships with compressed man pages, and uses this variable to control that behavior.
Starting with OpenBSD 3.3, setting WRKOBJDIR creates the whole WRKDIR hierarchy under ${WRKOBJDIR}, so OBJMACHINE is no longer useful.
The operating system. This ports tree is only used on OpenBSD.
Use OSREV instead.
Base location for packages built, everything is based on PACKAGE_REPOSITORY now.
Used to be set during package creation, so that the port would test it to tweak some settings at this point. All its effects are now achieved through MULTI_PACKAGES.
used to be retrieved from a separate site list. For greater flexibility, all files are now retrieved from MASTER_SITES, MASTER_SITES0, ..., MASTER_SITES9, using a ‘:0’ to ‘:9’ extension to the file name, e.g., 
PATCHFILES=foo.diff.gz
PATCH_SITES=ftp://ftp.zoinx.org/pub/

becomes

PATCHFILES=foo.diff.gz:0
MASTER_SITES0=ftp://ftp.zoinx.org/pub/
The OpenBSD project does not ship distfiles on cdrom. Concentrate on real questions instead, make sure PERMIT_PACKAGE_CDROM is set correctly.
Replaced by PKG_CREATE.
Old user settings. See PACKAGE_REPOSITORY.
Old user settings. See PACKAGE_REPOSITORY.
From NetBSD. This is PLIST. OpenBSD does not give a specific name to the generated file. It is not recommended to try to access them directly.
Used to refer to the full package name, has been superseded by FULLPKGNAME-foo, for SUBPACKAGE -foo . PKGNAME now holds the package name, not taking multi-packages or flavors into account. Most ports are not concerned by this change.
From NetBSD and FreeBSD. Use SUBST_VARS instead. OpenBSD does not allow general substitutions of the form VAR=value, but uses only a list of variables instead. Most package files gets transformed, instead of only the packing list.
Port has cryptographic issues. OpenBSD focuses on PERMIT_PACKAGE_{FTP,CDROM} instead.
Old pipeline for creating packing-lists at the ports level. Necessary functionality has been integrated directly into pkg_create(1).
Old location for scripts related to the current port. There is no reason for the semantic distinction, use FILESDIR for those.
Used to contain the environment for invoking various scripts. CONFIGURE_ENV and MAKE_ENV are enough.
Had to be set to ‘Yes’ if port could only be built on architectures with shared libraries.
Use CONFIGURE_STYLE instead.
The framework will automatically detect the presence of .tar.bz2 files to extract. See also BZIP2, EXTRACT_CASES, and EXTRACT_SUFX.
Use CONFIGURE_STYLE instead.
The framework will automatically detect the presence of .zip files to extract. See also ZIP, EXTRACT_CASES, and EXTRACT_SUFX.
Use make show=name instead of make show VARNAME=name.
Directory used to build package information from the templates under ${PKGDIR}. This information is now built on the fly by pkg_create(1).

{files,patches,pkg}.${ARCH}
Offensive to introspection, makes it impossible to build a decent sqlports on a given arch. Hasn't been used for a long time, and there are lots of mechanisms such as PKG_ARGS and fragment substitution, or PATCH_LIST to achieve similar results.
Makefile.${ARCH}
Likewise, offensive to introspection too.
${FILESDIR}/md5
Renamed to distinfo to match other BSD, and save directories.
${SCRIPTDIR}/{pre,do,post}-*
Identical functionality can be obtained through a {pre,do,post}-* target, invoking the script manually if necessary.
${SCRIPTDIR}/configure
No longer invoked automatically. Just inline the instructions in do-configure in the Makefile, or put the script in ${FILESDIR} and invoke it.
${PKGDIR}/COMMENT
Use COMMENT variable instead.
${PKGDIR}/DEINSTALL*
Use @unexec annotations in the packing-list instead.
${PKGDIR}/INSTALL*
Use @exec annotations in the packing-list instead.
${PKGDIR}/PLIST.{noshared,no-shared,shared}
Packaging list fragments to handle platforms that did not support shared libraries.
${PKGDIR}/PLIST.sed
Use PLIST directly. Until revision 1.295, bsd.port.mk did not substitute variables in the packing list unless this special form was used.
${PKGDIR}/REQ*
Old requirement script. Was mostly unused anyway.
/usr/share/mk/bsd.port.mk
Original location of bsd.port.mk. The current file lives under ${PORTSDIR}/infrastructure/mk/bsd.port.mk, whereas /usr/share/mk/bsd.port.mk is just a stub.
{scripts,files,patches}.${OPSYS}
The OpenBSD ports tree focuses on robustness, not on being portable to other operating systems. In any case, portability should not need to depend on operating system dependent patches.
/usr/local/etc
Used by FreeBSD to marshall system configuration files. All OpenBSD system configuration files are located in /etc, or in a subdirectory of /etc.

ftp(1), pkg_add(1), pkg_create(1), OpenBSD::Intro(3p), bsd.port.arch.mk(5), mk.conf(5), port-modules(5), library-specs(7), mirroring-ports(7), packages-specs(7), pkgpath(7), ports(7)

The ports mechanism originally came from FreeBSD. A lot of additions were taken from NetBSD over the seminal years.

Since 1998, the framework has been systematically cleaned-up and reorganized to remove bugs. New features have been carefully introduced, trying hard to avoid inconsistencies.

FLAVORS, MULTI_PACKAGES and FAKE are OpenBSD improvements. Most recent additions do not come from another BSD.

LOCALBASE, X11BASE, SYSCONFDIR and PREFIX are not heeded consistently. Most of the ports tree will probably fall apart if one tries to build/use stuff elsewhere.

May 17, 2016 OpenBSD-6.0