A Plea to Reduce Dependences (e.g., for swig)

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Aug 17, 2011, at 05:02, M.E. O'Neill wrote:

> Anders F Björklund wrote:
>>> The previous +system_x11 variant did this, it would use $x11prefix (/usr/X11R6 or /usr/X11 depending on your system version) rather than install new ports in $prefix (for xorg).
> 
> and Ryan Schmidt replied:
>> Right. And so many issues occurred as a result that it is a perfect case study of why we should not do such things in the future.
> 
> It's possible that the fundamental idea is reasonable, but it is merely the particular execution of the idea that was flawed in this case.
> 
> Maybe you could provide more detail (or pointers) about the problems that occurred?  In my experience, there are quite a number of things that can go wrong in the MacPorts model of variants/installed/activated, but as I understand it, those fundamentals have stayed the same for a long time despite their potential for problems.
> 
> (If the only goal is to minimize problems, a ports system that does nothing at all and contains no ports seems like an ideal trouble-free system.  Useless for users, but highly maintainable with few trouble spots.)

We have limited time and resources available. We would like to minimize the number of variables, to increase the chance a user will be successfully able to install a port. Requiring dependencies from MacPorts rather than allowing system versions (which can vary drastically across the available Mac OS X releases) was an easy way to do this.

I don't want to re-open this can of worms. It's a problem we've already solved, by not allowing what's being proposed in this thread.