Default +universal variant for configure-based ports

[Blair Zajac]

And do we have to wait for MacPorts 1.4.0 before using these new commands.

For example, right now libiconv is broken.  If you try to build 
something that depends upon it:

$ port -v build libxml2
Error: Unable to execute port: invalid command name 
"configure.universal_ldflags-append"

I'm presuming this is from this line in dports/textproc/libiconv/Portfile:

+configure.universal_ldflags-append \
+                -isysroot /Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.4u.sdk

Regards,
Blair

Blair Zajac wrote:
> 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
> 


-- 
Blair Zajac, Ph.D.
CTO, OrcaWare Technologies
<blair at orcaware.com>
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