why ports fail?

What are the most common reasons ports fail with the error message saying that "x out of y hunks failed"? I assume it can't find the patch files.

If this happens, where is the best place to go to diagnose the problem? The *.rej file or what?

Lastly, is it really worth it to rely on the ports system all the time? Is it a bad practice to try to do the building and installing manually sometimes?

On a side note, I was able to rebuld my kernel and update 4.4-RELEASE to 4.5-STABLE finally.

TIA,
Brett

>> error message saying that "x out of y hunks failed"?

The patch doesn't match your src.

>> where is the best place to go to diagnose the problem?

What's your uname -r? Which particular port and its modified date in its Makefile? The best way is to contact the port maintainer if it's broken.

>> The *.rej file or what?

To fix it by hand, yes, just read the .rej and merge the diffs to the original src by hand. That's exactly what I have done to qmail source all the time when trying to patch it with 15 different patches that conflict one another.

>> is it really worth it to rely on the ports system all the time?

Yes but with make extract and examination of the original src under that work dir.

>> Is it a bad practice to try to do....

No if that software is not available in the ports collection.