confusion in base regarding [option os.arch] and ${os.arch}

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Oct 7, 2000, at 19:11, Jeremy Lavergne wrote:

> reading through base, it looks like os.arch is set to something  
> based   on
> its original value, while that original value is actually used as
> os_platform (and os.platform). if this is the case, those changes were
> never ported into port[un]archive.tcl. i don't understand how to
> reference platform correctly from there, as it seems that the  
> values   are
> different when they're pulled from [option os.arch] versus $
> {os.arch}
>
> any care to shed light on this for a newbie tcl'er?
>
> what i essentially want to do is change archive.fulldestpath from    
> [file
> join ${archive.destpath} [option os.platform] [option os.arch]]   to  
> [file
> join ${archive.destpath} [option os.platform] ${os.arch}]   where  
> os.arch
> is x86_64 or what have you, instead of option os.arch's   i386
>
> if i understood the transforms in portmain.tcl then that's what should
> be done here. incidentally, after this one change we can actually do
> binary distribution via archivemode

I would think ${os.arch} and [option os.arch] refer to the same  
variable, and that the syntax difference relates to where in the code  
you're accessing it from.

When does os.arch seem to be x86_64? As far as I can tell, the only  
possible values for os.arch should be "i386" and "powerpc". I recently  
corrected this in the Guide:

http://guide.macports.org/#reference.variables

Perhaps you're thinking of configure.build_arch which could be "i386",  
"x86_64", "ppc" or "ppc64"?