MacPorts trunk is deactivating universal and activating non-universal ports

[Ryan Schmidt]

Why is MacPorts trunk deactivating my universal ports and activating  
my non-universal ports?

$ port installed rpm51
The following ports are currently installed:
   rpm51 @5.1.6_1 (active)
$ port -ux upgrade rpm51
--->  Deactivating libiconv @1.12_2+universal
--->  Activating libiconv @1.12_2
--->  Deactivating bzip2 @1.0.5_2+universal
--->  Activating bzip2 @1.0.5_2
--->  Fetching rpm51
--->  Verifying checksum(s) for rpm51
--->  Extracting rpm51
--->  Applying patches to rpm51
--->  Configuring rpm51
^C
$

During rpm51 configuration, gettext programs crash, because gettext  
is compiled 4-way universal but now that gettext's dependency  
libiconv has been switched to non-universal, gettext can't function.

This behavior is new for trunk. MacPorts 1.7.0 would deactivate the  
universal version, then reactivate the universal version, which was  
dumb but at least didn't break anything. This was described here:

http://trac.macports.org/ticket/16085

Anyone know why this changed in trunk?