portfile question concerning optional deps

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Mar 3, 2011, at 16:26, Daniel J. Luke wrote:

> On Mar 3, 2011, at 5:20 PM, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
>> 
> 
>> Do not use bin:- or lib:-style dependencies for this purpose; they would allow a file outside of the MacPorts prefix to satisfy the dependency, and we don't want that. Use only path:-style.
> 
> Oh, I actually though you had fixed this ;-)
> 
> Do we need to audit ports that use bin/lib and see if we can just change the behavior in some future release?

There are occasional valid uses for wanting to allow dependencies installed outside MacPorts For example, we allow an outside MacTeX installation to satisfy. Several ports also go the extra mile and indicate that they need grep or sed, but the ones included with Mac OS X are ok. So I don't think changing the behavior of bin:- or lib:-style dependencies is warranted. Port authors just need to use the correct dependency style for what they're trying to do.