Disabling a Variant?

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Aug 18, 2012, at 21:05, Jeremy Lavergne <jeremy at lavergne.gotdns.org> wrote:

>> But I don't think I can "disable_variant".  What's the correct way to go
>> about doing this?  Will "port" work correctly when upgrading from
>> "qt4-mac +mysql" to a new version without the +mysql variant, if that's
>> the way to go?
> 
> The way I usually do it is add in a dependency in the now-empty variant, then eventually remove the variant. The goal being that the user will then end up with the new port installed via a dependency before the variant leaves qt4-mac.

A dependency on the new port (e.g. qt4-mac-mysql5-plugin) cannot be added in the qt4-mac port's old variant, because the new port depends on qt4-mac, and that would be a circular dependency.

> As for properly marking it requested, I suspect you can do that via the API as well, no?

Just keep the old +mysql variant around to help with upgrades, and make it just print an error message informing the user to use the new port instead. Delete the compatibility variant after "everyone" has upgraded (i.e. after one year).