macports fetch suggestion

[Daniel Price]

Dear Macports developers,

Here is a simple suggestion for improving the macports build process. Since the build process for each port is neatly divided into "fetch", "configure", "build" etc, would it be possible to perform the "fetch" step for *all* dependencies first? This is to avoid the need to be continuously connected to the internet during what can be a very long build process, such that the build can complete "offline" in it's own time.

That is, instead of:
dep1: fetch->configure->build...
dep2: fetch->configure->build...

I am suggesting changing the order to:
dep1:fetch
dep2:fetch

dep1:configure->build
dep2:configure->build

Maybe a quick way this could be implemented would be to just add a new "gather" step before what macports currently does. 

gather[
dep1: fetch
dep2: fetch
]

then the build process proceeds unchanged as before (assuming here that it doesn't matter if the fetch step is repeated because the files will already have been downloaded):
dep1: fetch->configure->build...
dep2: fetch->configure->build...

It seems to me (maybe naively) that this would be pretty simple to add, and I think it would be a nice improvement to the build process.

Just a suggestion - feel free to take it or leave it!

Regards,

Daniel