I’ve been updating all my FreeBSD ports recently and one continuing pain is the gerenation fo the plist file. Looking the Porters Handbook gave me the answer though. There’s a script you can use to make a plist. It needs a bit of editing afterwards, but it’s a good start.
The only problem is that you have to install the port to a temporary area first. This appears to be the best way to do it as an ordinary user instead of root.
% make install PREFIX=/tmp/myport INSTALL_AS_USER=yes NO_PKG_REGISTER=yes
After that, just run the magic script.
/usr/ports/Tools/scripts/plist -Md -m /etc/mtree/BSD.local.dist /tmp/myport > pkg-plist