depends_* with variants in Portfiles?

[PGNet Dev]

( i just joined list; if there's a pre-existing thread on this topic
in macports-dev, can someone 'point' to it? thx!)

i'm mod'ing ncurses' release Portfile to include config for the ABI=6 variant.

it's a trivial addition,

  variant abi6 description {new ABI for > 256 Color Support} {
      configure.args-append "--with-abi-version=6"
  }

but ...

the ncurses Portfile includes,

  ...
  # required for terminfo
  depends_run     port:ncursesw
  ...

which, in the case of the "+abi6" variant, should _also_ be a
similarly mod'd "+abi6" variant of port:ncursesw.

i'd thought/hoped that that could be dealt with simply by, e.g.,

 ---   depends_run     port:ncursesw
 +++   depends_run     port:ncursesw +abi6

it seems, however, that that's not so simple, per,

  "dependencies need to allow inclusion of variant"
   http://trac.macports.org/ticket/126  ( Opened 7 years ago !? )

         " ... but if you would like to discuss why this should be
implemented and how it could be done, by all means bring it up on
macports-dev. When a consensus is reached, more code can be written.
..."

it's not yet doable :-/

so, 1st, the "why".

if not 'with variants' for depends_*, how -- e.g., in my particular
case of "ncurses(w) +abi6" -- else should this be done? not an
uncommon occurrence, I'd suggest.   there is, of course, the path of
completely separate ports/Portfiles, but that seems silly ...