+x11, and +quartz variants (or a dangerous idea)

[Randall Wood]

 I would like to suggest that the variants +quartz and +x11 should be
supported where relevant, eliminating the use of the +no_x11 variant:


+quartz Enable building the port to render graphics using the quartz engine
and aqua user interface
+x11 Enable building the port to use X11


Furthermore, I would like to suggest that these variants should never be
default variants and that we should modify the macports base to recognize
that a port has these variants and if neither is selected (either at the
command line or in variants.conf) that an error message should be displayed
explaining that the port may be installed with either: +quartz, +x11, or
+quartz+x11, although some ports may result in unpredicatable behavior if
+quartz+x11 is used.


Furthermore, I would like to suggest that the +no_x11 variant and the
+no_quartz (if it is used at all) variants should be actively discouraged.


Background:


I have removed X11 from my laptop and am building (albeit slowly) and using
applications that I used to run under X11 under Aqua or am using an
Aqua-based (roughly) equivilent application. This has revealed a number of
instances of ports assuming that X11 is installed on a Mac OS X box, when
that assumition is or should be false, such as when the upstream project is
supporting Quartz-only builds, or when the project actually only really
cares if GTK+ is installed, but the port hauls in X-based dependencies
anyway. Some ports even build both the X11 and Quartz libraries for the
port, but then only advertize to subsequent and dependent builds only the
Quartz library.


While working through this, I realized that we should assume that X11 is not
available on a machine and that we should re-gin our ports to match that
assumption. Right now the assumption for most ports is that X11 is installed
on a machine, and that users would prefer items that provide both X11 and
Quartz should always provide X11 versions and should only maybe provide
Quartz versions.


Randall Wood
randall.h.wood at alexandriasoftware.com
http://shyramblings.blogspot.com
"The rules are simple: The ball is round. The game lasts 90 minutes. All the
rest is just philosophy."
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