Morgan - Ports and Packages

Hello


Allan has gotten me interested in Freebsd through TechSNAP and I am now trying to get my feet wet learning as much as I can in what little free time I have.


I have some questions regarding Port and Packages that I am hoping you could shed some light on.


1.       My original understanding is that ports and packages should pretty much have the same version of software. However, I quite often find what is in the port tree and on freshports.org to be newer then what is installed with pkg; even after doing a pkg update. Is this what is expected or am I doing something wrong or missing a step?


2.       Also, can you mix Port and Packages? Packages pretty much meet all my needs with the exaction of FFMPEG which (as I understand it) is missing things like LAME due to licensing restrictions. Could you have a system that has everything installed using package and then build FFMPEG from ports?


Assuming it is safe to mix ports and packages:

3.       Is there a simple way (i.e. one command) to build a port like FFMPEG but have it install any needed dependencies from packages?

4.       In a mixed system of ports and packages what is the best/simplest way to do updates? That is have anything installed by a package be updated by a package and ports by ports. That way you don’t have to worry about doing a pkg upgrade installing a new version of ffmpeg that does not have the option I am wanting.


Thank you,

Morgan