Simultaneous -devel and non-devel

[Dan Ports]

On Wed, Jan 13, 2010 at 03:59:58PM -0600, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
> A port named emacs-devel should install to the same place as a port called emacs. It should not be possible for both to be installed simultaneously. That is how our existing -devel/non-devel ports work. See the "documentation" here:

Interesting, thanks for bringing that to my attention (esp. the link
and associated email thread.)

Let me add a few more words of explanation about what I was thinking,
and see what makes sense re: naming.

I submitted an emacs22 port in addition to the existing emacs port
(which is now emacs 23.) I consider it important to be able to have the
two installed simultaneously -- e.g. for using elisp packages that
break under one or the other, testing packages on both versions, or
compatiblity with other systems.

Hence, emacs22 installs itself so that it doesn't conflict with emacs.
(This is mostly a matter of renaming a few binaries, e.g. emacs ->
emacs22, since much of emacs is already versioned, e.g. 
/usr/share/emacs/22.3.)

Now, for a while before emacs 23.1 was released I ran a cvs snapshot
to pick up a few bug fixes I cared about -- sounds like a perfect
reason to have a -devel port! Since we can install emacs22 and emacs at
once, why not be able to install the release and devel versions
together too?

Now I am learning that -devel and non-devel ports should install into
the same place, which does makes sense, and thus conflict -- which I
consider undesirable.

What are your thoughts on the best way to handle this? Is something
like python_select (which I am admittedly not at all familiar with!)
needed?

Dan

-- 
Dan R. K. Ports              MIT CSAIL                http://drkp.net/