The Ports and Packages System

Ports are a mechanism for reproducibly and consistently building software on OpenBSD. Packages are precompiled ports for a specific OpenBSD version and platform. Packages install quickly and easily, and are recommended by the OpenBSD folks. Installing from a port takes more time and effort, but can be customized for your environment or server.

The basic idea behind the ports system is that if source code must be modified or tweaked to build or run on OpenBSD, the modification process should be automated. If you need other software to build this program from source code or run it, those dependencies should be automatically used. If you record exactly which files the software installs, you can easily uninstall it. And if you have all of these things, you can pick up the software and install it on any similar OpenBSD system.

Packages are the installable files produced by the ports system. You can install packages over the network, either from your own package repository or from an OpenBSD mirror site. But before you can use a package, you must find it.