opnsense ports/package vs freebsd (vs mimugmail)

[squirk]

My goal: I'm trying to get Homebridge running.

I'm using mimugmail's pkg repo (thanks!) to set up a few other plugins (adguard, etc) and it provides an outdated version of nodejs and after hunting around, I think I need to build node20 and others from ports. 

I'm not sure how opnsense differs from the base freebsd.  I don't see anything special in make.conf or src.conf... It's been a long time since I've built ports (having switched to pkg a long time ago).   Is there a decent Getting Started primer documented somewhere?

[squirk]

Maybe more to the point: why is the FreeBSD package repo specifically disabled ( "{enabled=no}" in /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos)? 

Why not just leave it enabled with the OPNSense repo with preferred priority?  Assuming an up-to-date opnsense system, wouldn't the freebsd package be ok?

[mimugmail]

I can add node20 to my build if it helps :)

[franco]

Repo priorities in pkg-ugrade are fluent and make.conf options differ for us, see:

https://github.com/opnsense/tools/blob/master/config/23.7/make.conf


Cheers,
Franco

[squirk]

Adding it would be great, thanks.  But in the spirit of teach-a-man-to-fish, I'd love to know what your recipe is so that I could do it myself if needed.

[mimugmail]

No recipie, I just use the build tools and add additonal ports. You can do this on your own of course :)

[squirk]

I've been noodling around with this a bit and am finally trying to get this to work.  I'm using a FreeBSD 13.2-stable system as a build host, fwiw.

I'm having a bit of trouble grok'ing how things are set up.  Currently stuck very early in the `make ports` process:
Installed pkg version '1.20' does not match required version '1.19'

That seems really odd that the source has an old version of ports-mgmt/pkg - the 2023Q4, on my running opnsense server, both /usr/sbin/pkg & /usr/local/sbin/pkg report `1.20.8` (build host reports 1.20.9).

I *think* I followed the setup instructions properly... is there a step I missed?  I think I'm using the correct source, my ports clone is from `https://github.com/opnsense/ports`

gusnbrew# pwd
/usr/opnsense/ports
gusnbrew# git branch -a
* master
  remotes/origin/HEAD -> origin/master
  remotes/origin/master
  remotes/origin/pkg_update

opnsense tools:
gusnbrew# pwd
/usr/opnsense/tools
gusnbrew# git branch -a
* master
  remotes/origin/HEAD -> origin/master
  remotes/origin/master

Is there a good conversation somewhere there some of the source & build management rationale is discussed?