ruby_select plan, rubygem: dependency operator

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Apr 14, 2009, at 15:30, C. Florian Ebeling wrote:

> That's the reason for the suggestion to add a new dependency type  
> "gem" or
> "rubygem", which behaves much like "path" or "lib" dependencies.  
> Not controlling
> installation, but checking.

I don't quite understand how this suggestion would work, and on  
principle I think I'm not in favor of adding a new dependency type  
which is specific to a particular type of software. All existing  
dependency types are generic and applicable to all types of software,  
which is IMHO as it should be. If you want to depend on a gem, there  
should be a port for that gem, and you declare a dependency on the  
port as you would for any other type of software. There could,  
though, be shortcuts that would make such portfiles smaller. I think  
that would fall under the umbrella of a portgroup, like the perl5  
portgroup for simplifying Perl CPAN modules or the upcoming pecl  
portgroup for PHP PECL modules.

http://trac.macports.org/ticket/18839