2026-09-11 –, D.3.06
The FreeBSD Ports Collection is one of the largest third-party software repositories in the open-source world. According to Repology, it ranks in the top four in terms of the number of packages, maintainers, and up-to-date packages. Alright, that's great, but how does it work? What is this mystical ports framework? Why is it so powerful?
The workshop has 3 parts: user usage, ports maintenance, and framework development. The ports framework is a dense codebase and you'll need a map to navigate it. This workshop is the map. The workshop's goal is to raise your confidence in using ports, help you understand the framework's current limitations, and enable you to modify the framework and contribute those changes back.
Mateusz Piotrowski is a Systems Engineer based in Berlin, Germany. He has long contributed to open source, primarily to the FreeBSD and OpenZFS projects. He served on the FreeBSD Core Team from 2022 to 2024. Professionally, he consults companies on performance engineering and open-source development.