64-bit versions of some ports

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Feb 11, 2008, at 06:23, Emil Lundberg wrote:

>>> From the previous discussion, I remember that we (or rather mww)
>>> started by changing the +universal variant to build all 4  
>>> versions (2
>>> architectures each of 32-bit and 64-bit) but this was problematic
>>> because many ports failed to build out of the box as 64-bit, and  
>>> there
>>> was no clear upgrade path for those who already had 2-architecture
>>> universal variants installed, and it was said that 64-bit  
>>> versions of
>>> most ports don't make sense anyway (aren't faster, or possibly are
>>> even slower). But it seems like we want to be able to do this for
>>> selected ports.
>>
>> Most of the ports that failed were using Carbon, or otherwise old...
>> (old Carbon GUI does not support 64-bit, only Cocoa GUI does that)
>
> Thanks for revisiting this. There is a real need to be able to  
> compile, by default, for the native architecture of your machine.  
> There is also a real need to preseve backwards compatibility. A  
> modest proposal (based on posts and discussions old and new) that  
> might please everyone:
>
> * Keep the "universal" variant for building architecture-fat  
> binaries (only).
> * Add a new "fat" variant for building bit-fat binaries (only).
> * Activate the "fat" variant by default on all library-class ports.

What are "library-class ports"? What I mean is: what criteria would  
you use (what portfile variables, for example) to classify a port as  
a library-class port?

> * Add an config option to set the default bit-ness ("always 32-bit"  
> or "native") for all builds.
>
> Some of it may well be in there already; I haven't been able to  
> locate it in the docs though, e.g. where does "universal_archs"  
> apply...?
>
>
>> I reverted +universal back to meaning "10.4u SDK for ppc/i386 arch",
>> and then made them into parameters for overriding locally if desired.
>
> So is it possible, using the current MacPorts 1.6.0, to build bit- 
> fat/quad-fat binaries, and if so, how is this accomplished (feel  
> free to bring this onto the users-list)?

That comment applied to trunk only. 1.6.0 does not have the  
universal_archs variable, and has always built only the two 32-bit  
architectures. MacPorts in trunk has universal_archs, which was for a  
time set to all 4 architectures, but that didn't work well and then  
was changed to use only the 2 again. Someone using MacPorts trunk  
could set universal_archs to a different set of architectures to  
include in a universal build, but I would not expect any portfile  
author to have tested with anything other than the default "ppc i386"  
architecture set.