Python ports providing GNOME bindings

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Apr 15, 2010, at 20:12, William Siegrist wrote:

> On Apr 15, 2010, at 5:23 PM, Ryan Schmidt wrote regarding ticket 126:
> 
>> I remain unconvinced the "bug" should be fixed. If port A depends on port X+Y and port B depends on port X+Z then what? What if X's variants +Y and +Z conflict?
>> 
>> To take the example from the current thread, about which python version to use, we currently have the ability with our py*-* ports to install for multiple python versions simultaneously. If we switch to having a single port for each python module, we lose that ability. What if port A requires something that only works with python 2.5 and port B requires something that only works with python 2.6? Currently, we can handle that situation; if we change to use variants, we lose it.
>> 
>> IMHO we should be encouraging the removal of variants from ports (e.g. by moving choices into separate ports), not the proliferation of new variants.
> 
> One solution is to install every port (and all of its dependencies) into its own "chroot-like" subdirectory with all of the correct dylib linkages. So each port you install might have its own personal copy of python built just the way it needs it. Since disk space is cheap, all we need to do is come up with binaries for each port+variant-combo, plus some other details here and there.

That sounds like a drastic departure from the way MacPorts works today. It sounds like a lot of work, for I'm not sure what benefit.

Disk space isn't necessarily *that* cheap. For example, someone I was recommending MacPorts to recently balked at the requirement to install Xcode, since he did not have enough room to do so on the small drive that came with his MacBook Air.