2025-06-07 Finding rust dependencies in Makefile.crates

One of the patterns in the ports tree that a potential porter would find when dealing with Rust programs available via FreeBSD ports is the use of a file named Makefile.crates. There is a section in the porters handbook that talks ports using cargo. The reasoning for Makefile.crates is explained here:

Sometimes, port Makefiles can be really long. For example, rust ports can have a very long CARGO_CRATES list.

However, this separation also makes it easy to detect if a port depends on Rust. Here is a short check way to check the number of ports with a Makefile.crates (based on a ports tree that was updated to around May 27th. The number you get might be different (most likely more) based on how updated your ports tree is.

$ find . -type f -name Makefile.crates | wc -l
   287

On a complete side note, I have been spending more time tweaking the blog's look (as well as figuring out how syntax highlighting for code excerpts are handled) and will continue tweaks over time.