ports:index

Ports INDEX File
Introduction
Tools that read INDEX
Tools that use make describe
Tools that generate INDEX
Notes

Ports INDEX File

Introduction

Index files contain port/package metadata, providing fast lookup of information by other tools. They are located in /usr/ports (${INDEXDIR}, by default), named INDEX-X (${INDEXFILE}), where X is the systems FreeBSD major version (Example: INDEX-13, INDEX-14)

An index file can either be generated with the make index command, or, a pre-built and compressed version downloaded with the make fetchindex command.

Each line of an index file is one entry keyed by PKGNAME, containing port metadata output by the make describe command.

As of 2022-05 make describe output contains:

distribution-name|port-path|installation-prefix|comment|
description-file|maintainer|categories|extract-depends|
patch-depends|fetch-depends|build-depends|run-depends|www site

Tools that read INDEX

Tool	Description	Comments
portsnap	Compares INDEX to .portsnap.INDEX for 'update' command	Bug 159946¹⁾
make search	Queries INDEX for `attribute=value` lookup
pkg version	Used by pkg `version` (pkg-version) and `rquery` (pkg-rquery) commands	Appending new fields not a problem ²⁾

Tools that use make describe

Tool	Description	Comments
make index	Generates INDEX

Tools that generate INDEX

Tool	Description	Comments
portindex	Perl INDEX generator	WWW GitHub
makeindex	TeX makeindex

Notes

This format has been set in stone due to certain tools that try to parse it for information, and until a complete list of these tools is found we can't do much about sanitising the format.

Ports

¹⁾

ColinPercival has explained that extra fields must be stripped for <9, maybe he can get patches in before release

²⁾

Only reads as far as it needs to

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