14.5 Portscout: the FreeBSD Ports Distfile Scanner

The build cluster is dedicated to building the latest release of each port with distfiles that have already been fetched. However, as the Internet continually changes, distfiles can quickly go missing. Portscout, the FreeBSD Ports distfile scanner, attempts to query every download site for every port to find out if each distfile is still available. Portscout can generate HTML reports and send emails about newly available ports to those who request them. Unless not otherwise subscribed, maintainers are asked to check periodically for changes, either by hand or using the RSS feed.

Portscout's first page gives the email address of the port maintainer, the number of ports the maintainer is responsible for, the number of those ports with new distfiles, and the percentage of those ports that are out-of-date. The search function allows for searching by email address for a specific maintainer, and for selecting whether or not only out-of-date ports should be shown.

Upon clicking on a maintainer's email address, a list of all of their ports is displayed, along with port category, current version number, whether or not there is a new version, when the port was last updated, and finally when it was last checked. A search function on this page allows the user to search for a specific port.

Clicking on a port name in the list displays the FreshPorts port information.