[cm3]

I've heard time and again that you should either build everything from ports of install pkg binaries? I believe it's because of different use flags (in Gentoo lingo), so maybe you mean that one would build everything privately in a consistent poudriere repo with personal settings and only ever install packages from there. Is that right?

[floatboth]

Uh… no? Unless you really customize all the options I guess. There's no reason to rebuild the exact same package you'll get from the repo.

E.g. I install all firefox's dependencies from pkg, then I build firefox from ports with the GTK3 option. Same with packages that use openssl (I use libressl). Never had any problems with that.

[Sanddancer]

You can mix and match. The only problem comes if you have flags in a dependency that don't match the flags in the package pkg wants to install. A bit bothersome, but it allows you the best of both worlds.

[aduitsis]

As floatboth said, there's really no reason to build every minor package by hand. Only those that you want to change the config or their dependencies.