I finally started experimenting with the pkgng stuff and it seems pretty good. I too have been annoyed by the constant compilation, so I've been pleased that I'

I finally started experimenting with the pkgng stuff and it seems pretty good. I too have been annoyed by the constant compilation, so I've been pleased that I'm getting along with the occasional "pkg upgrade", which will update all my packages, even the ones built from the ports tree. If you have custom compile options in some of your packages, you can simply lock them and pkg will leave them alone; you can then use portmaster or whatever you prefer to re-compile them yourself.