[11796] fixed auctex devel variant

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Apr 18, 2007, at 15:20, Dominik Fisch wrote:

> I've opened ticket #11796 to describe the build problem I  
> experienced while
> trying to build auctex development variant. After playing around a  
> bit I found
> the problem within the Portfile and submitted a patch.
>
> http://trac.macports.org/projects/macports/ticket/11796
>
> Review and commit, anyone? ;-)

I'm concerned by the proposed patch, as it seems to indicate a  
deficiency in the base MacPorts system. For those who haven't looked  
at the ticket, the reported error is:

Error: Error executing devel: can't set "depends_lib": invalid depspec:
Error: Status 1 encountered during processing.

And the proposed patch is:

--- Portfile    (revision 24279)
+++ Portfile    (working copy)
@@ -23,8 +23,8 @@
depends_lib    port:emacs
depends_run    port:teTeX
-variant devel  { depends_lib-delete port:emacs
-                 depends_lib-append port:emacs-devel
+variant devel  { depends_lib-append port:emacs-devel
+                 depends_lib-delete port:emacs
                 }

In other words, apparently if you delete the last item of, for  
example, depends_lib, using depends_lib-delete, then you cannot  
depends_lib-append anymore. Or maybe the error already occurs when  
deleting the last item of the list.

Would any base developers care to comment on whether base should be  
improved here instead of this portfile patch?