Discouraging variants [was: Re: port install efficiency issue]

[Shreevatsa R]

On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 3:47 AM, Ryan Schmidt <ryandesign at macports.org> wrote:
> Mac OS X is not Debian. The Mac way is to provide not as many options as
> possible, but as few options as possible. Meet the needs of most of the
> users with the default setup, and provide a few options for everyone else.
>
> As a consumer, I do not enjoy having to select amongst 37 different types of
> toothpaste at the grocery store. More choices is not always better.
>
> http://www.cafeaulait.org/images/remotes.png

These are very good words! I couldn't agree more.
This would be a good starting point to mention my pet peeve with
MacPorts, which is the excessive use of variants.

Ideally, all ports would enable by default all the features that users
might want, and only leave as variants those features which are
*definitely* undesirable to significantly many people (and definitely
desirable for significantly many). Instead, some ports try to make
every feature a separate variant. This is entirely unnecessary: disk
space is cheap and shouldn't be considered a cost of enabling the
feature by default.

It is important to remember that with N variants, there are 2^N
potential versions to test -- such combinatorial explosion is hard to
maintain and introduces many bugs. There will be situations where
variants are absolutely necessary, but if there can be consensus
against variants, and if the Guide (etc.) could suggest to maintainers
that variants should only be used when necessary, I hope it will lead
to some improvement.

Regards,
Shreevatsa