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

[Perry Lee]

On Mar 25, 2009, at 5:44 AM, C. Florian Ebeling wrote:
>>> Wouldn't it make sense to provide a separate and conflicting whole
> port maybe for this hten? I now that seems a bit farfetched, but
> I'm trying to understand the implications of an hypothentical
> removal of the variant concept altogether, which I would find
> quite a clean scenario. I don't see a real blocker for such a move
> yet.

For the previously listed variants (+doc, +server), these can be made  
into separate ports; however, what do you do in cases such as the curl  
port?  For example, the curl port has the variants openldap and  
sftp_scp.  I don't imagine many users would need these features, but  
there are users that use them. Enabling these features by default is  
not reasonable because their dependencies are heavy (specifically  
openldap), but making these two variants a separate port also doesn't  
make sense. The variants openldap and sftp_scp are not mutually  
exclusive; I may want to enable both. Without variants, I don't see  
how we could handle these types of situations.