portfile question concerning optional deps

[Daniel J. Luke]

On Mar 3, 2011, at 6:17 PM, Joshua Root wrote:
> 
>> It would be useful at some point to be able to differentiate between ports that need a library or ports that need an executable binary that is provided by another port (think about library ABI changes).
> 
> Knowing whether a port actually links with each dependency is also
> important for arch checking and license compliance (with binaries).
> However I'm not clear on how the change you're proposing will help with
> that.

The lib: dependency could be in the portfile (and recorded in the registry as a lib: dependency).

I could want port:postgresql90 because I need libpsql.dylib or because I need the psql binary - it would be nice to be able to record which one I actually want. I can't necessarily just have it in depends_run (instead of depends_lib) because the configure/build phases might need to check for it or use it.

I guess for library dependencies, it probably makes more sense to have something automatically look through the destroot and verify what actually got linked, though ...

--
Daniel J. Luke                                                                   
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