After configuration, initialize poudriere so that it installs a jail with the required FreeBSD tree and a ports tree. Specify a name for the jail using -j and the FreeBSD version with -v. On systems running FreeBSD/amd64, the architecture can be set with -a to either i386 or amd64. The default is the architecture shown by uname.

# poudriere jail -c -j 10amd64 -v 10.0-RELEASE
====>> Creating 10amd64 fs... done
====>> Fetching base.txz for FreeBSD 10.0-RELEASE amd64
/poudriere/jails/10amd64/fromftp/base.txz      100% of   59 MB 1470 kBps 00m42s
====>> Extracting base.txz... done
====>> Fetching src.txz for FreeBSD 10.0-RELEASE amd64
/poudriere/jails/10amd64/fromftp/src.txz       100% of  107 MB 1476 kBps 01m14s
====>> Extracting src.txz... done
====>> Fetching games.txz for FreeBSD 10.0-RELEASE amd64
/poudriere/jails/10amd64/fromftp/games.txz     100% of  865 kB  734 kBps 00m01s
====>> Extracting games.txz... done
====>> Fetching lib32.txz for FreeBSD 10.0-RELEASE amd64
/poudriere/jails/10amd64/fromftp/lib32.txz     100% of   14 MB 1316 kBps 00m12s
====>> Extracting lib32.txz... done
====>> Cleaning up... done
====>> Jail 10amd64 10.0-RELEASE amd64 is ready to be used

# poudriere ports -c -p local
====>> Creating local fs... done
====>> Extracting portstree "local"...
Looking up portsnap.FreeBSD.org mirrors... 7 mirrors found.
Fetching public key from ec2-eu-west-1.portsnap.freebsd.org... done.
Fetching snapshot tag from ec2-eu-west-1.portsnap.freebsd.org... done.
Fetching snapshot metadata... done.
Fetching snapshot generated at Tue Feb 11 01:07:15 CET 2014:
94a3431f0ce567f6452ffde4fd3d7d3c6e1da143efec76100% of   69 MB 1246 kBps 00m57s
Extracting snapshot... done.
Verifying snapshot integrity... done.
Fetching snapshot tag from ec2-eu-west-1.portsnap.freebsd.org... done.
Fetching snapshot metadata... done.
Updating from Tue Feb 11 01:07:15 CET 2014 to Tue Feb 11 16:05:20 CET 2014.
Fetching 4 metadata patches... done.
Applying metadata patches... done.
Fetching 0 metadata files... done.
Fetching 48 patches.
(48/48) 100.00%  done.
done.
Applying patches...
done.
Fetching 1 new ports or files... done.
/poudriere/ports/tester/CHANGES
/poudriere/ports/tester/COPYRIGHT

[...]

Building new INDEX files... done.

On a single computer, poudriere can build ports with multiple configurations, in multiple jails, and from different port trees. Custom configurations for these combinations are called sets. See the CUSTOMIZATION section of poudriere(8) for details after ports-mgmt/poudriere or ports-mgmt/poudriere-devel is installed.

The basic configuration shown here puts a single jail-, port-, and set-specific make.conf in /usr/local/etc/poudriere.d. The filename in this example is created by combining the jail name, port name, and set name: 10amd64-local-workstation-make.conf. The system make.conf and this new file are combined at build time to create the make.conf used by the build jail.

Packages to be built are entered in 10amd64-local-workstation-pkglist:

editors/emacs
devel/git
ports-mgmt/pkg
...

Options and dependencies for the specified ports are configured:

# poudriere options -j 10amd64 -p local -z workstation -f 10amd64-local-workstation-pkglist

Finally, packages are built and a package repository is created:

# poudriere bulk -j 10amd64 -p local -z workstation -f 10amd64-local-workstation-pkglist

While running, pressing Ctrl+t displays the current state of the build. Poudriere also builds files in /poudriere/logs/bulk/jailname that can be used with a web server to display build information.

After completion, the new packages are now available for installation from the poudriere repository.

For more information on using poudriere, see poudriere(8) and the main web site, https://github.com/freebsd/poudriere/wiki.

While it is possible to use both a custom repository along side of the official repository, sometimes it is useful to disable the official repository. This is done by creating a configuration file that overrides and disables the official configuration file. Create /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/FreeBSD.conf that contains the following:

FreeBSD: {
	enabled: no
}

Usually it is easiest to serve a poudriere repository to the client machines via HTTP. Set up a webserver to serve up the package directory, for instance: /usr/local/poudriere/data/packages/10amd64, where 10amd64 is the name of the build.

If the URL to the package repository is: http://pkg.example.com/10amd64, then the repository configuration file in /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/custom.conf would look like:

custom: {
	url: "http://pkg.example.com/10amd64",
	enabled: yes,
}