*-devel ports

[Anders F Björklund]

  Ryan Schmidt wrote:

> Note: MacPorts uses -devel ports for an entirely different purpose  
> than some other package managers (e.g. Linux? FreeBSD? not sure). In  
> those other package managers, a port foo-devel would contain the  
> headers necessary for other software to link with foo.

The MacPorts usage of "-devel" suffix for development releases was  
inherited from the FreeBSD Ports collection. RPM instead uses -devel to  
signify development packages (headers/libraries), while DEB uses a -dev  
suffix similarly.

See http://www.freebsd.org/ports/ (and compare with  
http://www.macports.org/ports.php)

> But in MacPorts, these headers are already part of the foo port.

This is a current shortcoming / simplification in MacPorts. Eventually  
it needs to support such subpackages or "SplitOffs", as they are  
necessary in order to make for more fine-grained binary packaging and  
dependency resolution.

Fink uses  
http://www.finkproject.org/doc/packaging/reference.php? 
phpLang=en#splitoffs

--anders