Some Useful Information on Ports - Yu-Shun Wang (Aug 8, 2005) 
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Whenever we need a software or application, the first thing
we do is to check the FreeBSD port tree to see if it's already
in port. Chances are, if it's useful/popular/common/important,
it'll be there. There are currently more than 13K ports in
the tree, i.e., 13K apps/libs/pkgs. The good thing about
ports is that if you install from the port tree, the
dependency will be taken care of, and it'll make sure the
correct library paths, header files, etc. are set properly.
And you can easily upgrade them later with portupgrade.
It will even tell you when a port you want to install is
either already installed or not or whether it conflicts
with some other ports already installed.

A couple of resources:

>> man pages:

o ports(7) has the intro, corresponding make targets, and
  other useful bits regarding the port system. One important
  thing is how to search the port tree in command line.
  (Quick note: "cd /usr/ports && make search name=PATTERN",
   or key=PATTERN)

o portupgrade(1) is the man page of the portupgrade util.
  It will do the source upgrade of any ports in the port
  tree and update all the dependency info for upstream
  and downstream requirements. It's not part of the base
  system, but we install them by default on all our machines.

>> web pages:

On the freebsd.org site, a couple of useful docs regarding
ports:

In the "FreeBSD Handbook"

- http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/ports.html

  This covers the intros on how to _use_ ports.

- http://www.freshports.org

  has an easier interface of searching the port tree for apps
  you need. And it tracks the changes better.

Some caveats:

1. FreeBSD ports are usually up-to-date, but not always.
   The delay could range from a couple of days to months,
   depending on how crucial the ports are. It's mostly fine,
   unless you really need the newest, just-releasd-yesterday
   versions of something.

2. Not everything is in ports. E.g., some CPAN Perl modules are
   not included. It's possible you will need something that
   isn't in the port tree. It's not difficult to write a
   simple port skeleton to "port" it, though.