Use the macros provided in bsd.port.mk to ensure correct modes of files in the port's *-install targets. Set ownership directly in pkg-plist with the corresponding entries, such as @(owner,group,), @owner owner, and @group group. These operators work until overridden, or until the end of pkg-plist, so do not forget to reset them after they are no longer needed. The default ownership is root:wheel. See Section 7.6.13, “Base Keywords” for more information.

These variables are set to the install(1) command with the appropriate flags for each situation.

Installed binaries should be stripped. Do not strip binaries manually unless absolutely required. The INSTALL_PROGRAM macro installs and strips a binary at the same time. The INSTALL_LIB macro does the same thing to shared libraries.

When a file must be stripped, but neither INSTALL_PROGRAM nor INSTALL_LIB macros are desirable, ${STRIP_CMD} strips the program or shared library. This is typically done within the post-install target. For example:

post-install:
	${STRIP_CMD} ${STAGEDIR}${PREFIX}/bin/xdl

When multiple files need to be stripped:

post-install:
.for l in geometry media body track world
	${STRIP_CMD} ${STAGEDIR}${PREFIX}/lib/lib${PORTNAME}-${l}.so.0
.endfor

Use file(1) on a file to determine if it has been stripped. Binaries are reported by file(1) as stripped, or not stripped. Additionally, strip(1) will detect programs that have already been stripped and exit cleanly.

Sometimes, a large number of files must be installed while preserving their hierarchical organization. For example, copying over a whole directory tree from WRKSRC to a target directory under PREFIX. Note that PREFIX, EXAMPLESDIR, DATADIR, and other path variables must always be prepended with STAGEDIR to respect staging (see Section 6.1, “Staging”).

Two macros exist for this situation. The advantage of using these macros instead of cp is that they guarantee proper file ownership and permissions on target files. The first macro, COPYTREE_BIN, will set all the installed files to be executable, thus being suitable for installing into PREFIX/bin. The second macro, COPYTREE_SHARE, does not set executable permissions on files, and is therefore suitable for installing files under PREFIX/share target.

post-install:
	${MKDIR} ${STAGEDIR}${EXAMPLESDIR}
	(cd ${WRKSRC}/examples && ${COPYTREE_SHARE} . ${STAGEDIR}${EXAMPLESDIR})

This example will install the contents of the examples directory in the vendor distfile to the proper examples location of the port.

post-install:
	${MKDIR} ${STAGEDIR}${DATADIR}/summer
	(cd ${WRKSRC}/temperatures && ${COPYTREE_SHARE} "June July August" ${STAGEDIR}${DATADIR}/summer)

And this example will install the data of summer months to the summer subdirectory of a DATADIR.

Additional find arguments can be passed via the third argument to COPYTREE_* macros. For example, to install all files from the first example except Makefiles, one can use these commands.

post-install:
	${MKDIR} ${STAGEDIR}${EXAMPLESDIR}
	(cd ${WRKSRC}/examples && \
	${COPYTREE_SHARE} . ${STAGEDIR}${EXAMPLESDIR} "! -name Makefile")

These macros do not add the installed files to pkg-plist. They must be added manually. For optional documentation (PORTDOCS, see Section 5.15.4, “Install Additional Documentation”) and examples (PORTEXAMPLES), the %%PORTDOCS%% or %%PORTEXAMPLES%% prefixes must be prepended in pkg-plist.

If the software has some documentation other than the standard man and info pages that is useful for the user, install it under DOCSDIR This can be done, like the previous item, in the post-install target.

Create a new directory for the port. The directory name is DOCSDIR. This usually equals PORTNAME. However, if the user might want different versions of the port to be installed at the same time, the whole PKGNAME can be used.

Since only the files listed in pkg-plist are installed, it is safe to always install documentation to STAGEDIR (see Section 6.1, “Staging”). Hence .if blocks are only needed when the installed files are large enough to cause significant I/O overhead.

post-install:
	${MKDIR} ${STAGEDIR}${DOCSDIR}
	${INSTALL_MAN} ${WRKSRC}/docs/xvdocs.ps ${STAGEDIR}${DOCSDIR}

Here are some handy variables and how they are expanded by default when used in the Makefile:

These variables are exported to PLIST_SUB. Their values will appear there as pathnames relative to PREFIX if possible. That is, share/doc/PORTNAME will be substituted for %%DOCSDIR%% in the packing list by default, and so on. (See more on pkg-plist substitution here.)

All conditionally installed documentation files and directories are included in pkg-plist with the %%PORTDOCS%% prefix, for example:

%%PORTDOCS%%%%DOCSDIR%%/AUTHORS
%%PORTDOCS%%%%DOCSDIR%%/CONTACT

As an alternative to enumerating the documentation files in pkg-plist, a port can set the variable PORTDOCS to a list of file names and shell glob patterns to add to the final packing list. The names will be relative to DOCSDIR. Therefore, a port that utilizes PORTDOCS, and uses a non-default location for its documentation, must set DOCSDIR accordingly. If a directory is listed in PORTDOCS or matched by a glob pattern from this variable, the entire subtree of contained files and directories will be registered in the final packing list. If the DOCS option has been unset then files and directories listed in PORTDOCS would not be installed or added to port packing list. Installing the documentation at PORTDOCS as shown above remains up to the port itself. A typical example of utilizing PORTDOCS looks as follows:

PORTDOCS=	README.* ChangeLog docs/*

Try to let the port put things in the right subdirectories of PREFIX. Some ports lump everything and put it in the subdirectory with the port's name, which is incorrect. Also, many ports put everything except binaries, header files and manual pages in a subdirectory of lib, which does not work well with the BSD paradigm. Many of the files must be moved to one of these directories: etc (setup/configuration files), libexec (executables started internally), sbin (executables for superusers/managers), info (documentation for info browser) or share (architecture independent files). See hier(7) for details; the rules governing /usr pretty much apply to /usr/local too. The exception are ports dealing with USENET “news”. They may use PREFIX/news as a destination for their files.