Default +universal variant for configure-based ports

[Blair Zajac]

Hi Paul,

I looked through the diff for r22313 and didn't see anything that checks 
for OS X versions 10.3 or older, so will this break on older OSes? If it 
will break things, can you update the code to add this check?

I support a binary install of MacPorts on a portable firewire drive that 
runs Apache, MySQL etc and we need to support 10.3 clients.

Regards,
Blair


Elias Pipping wrote:
> That is a lovely addition and I embrace it wholeheartedly.
> 
> Now more than ever it brings up the need for a database that contains 
> information on which port builds on what platform and if its variant 
> +universal works, though.
> 
> So a port would have these entries e.g.:
> 
> db44     ppc   i386   universal
> 
> Panther   ?      ?        ?
> Tiger     X      ?        X
> Leopard   ?      ?        ?
> 
> or something like that. maybe i'm the only one to see it that way but i 
> find it problematic to just assume away every port builds on every 
> platform and is perfectly stable. also, is it really a good idea to keep 
> adding -devel ports instead of allowing a port to be available as 
> multiple "branches"? like bash 3.1.17 and 3.2.9 as a 3.1 and a 3.2 
> branch (yes, i'm thinking of gentoo - stable, testing, etc)?
> 
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Elias Pipping
> 
> 
> On Feb 26, 2007, at 5:45 AM, Paul Guyot wrote:
> 
>> Dear all,
>>
>> I've just implemented and committed a default +universal variant for 
>> configure-based ports. There's been some heat about +universal 
>> recently and I did not want every port to define the same code over 
>> and over.
>>
>> This variant is more or less equivalent to:
>> variant universal {
>>     configure.args-append "--disable-dependency-tracking"
>>     configure.env-append CFLAGS="-isysroot 
>> /Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.4u.sdk -arch i386 -arch ppc" LDFLAGS="-arch 
>> i386 -arch ppc"
>> }
>>
>> However, there is some additional magic:
>> * selecting the variant will fail if the port doesn't invoke configure 
>> (because user may think they can build the port universal while it 
>> would be effectless)
>> * selecting the variant will print a warning message if the port 
>> already overrides LDFLAGS or CFLAGS in the environment for the 
>> configure command
>> * you can add -O -g if the port requires it with just:
>> configure.universal_cflags-append    -O -g
>> * you can simply redefine the variant to override the default code and 
>> provide port-specific handler for the universal variant.
>>
>> etc.
>>
>> The variant is documented in portfile(7). I tested it with several 
>> ports and it seems to just work®™.
>>
>> I'm considering some future enhancements, but let's see what it gives 
>> if we start building ports with +universal. Of course, the build will 
>> probably fail if dependencies were not built universal.
>>
>> Enjoy!
>>
>> Paul