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

[Anders F Björklund]

Shreevatsa R wrote:

>> I thought the whole point of doing Ports for Mac was to provide
>> choice...
>
> IMO, the point was to provide "package mananagement", making it  
> easy to
> install, upgrade, and not have to chase down dependencies, especially
> for packages without a graphical binary installer.

Well, if MacPorts had used a package manager that could have been  
it. :-)
Sure it provides "software management" (or "port management") for you...
But when building packages, the actual handling of those is  
outsourced to
whatever package manager chosen - whether Installer.app or rpm or dpkg.

If and when the project starts a binary distribution, we can resume the
package management discussion. Hopefully it doesn't mean just "xpkg"...

--anders