wxWidgets vs. wxWidgets-devel: a proposal

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Sep 25, 2012, at 13:38, Andrea D'Amore wrote:

>> 2. Even for projects that support both 2.8 and 2.9, like, say wxMaxima, the users
>> may want to compile it for 64 bits -- IMHO such support should be default. It's
>> a bit irksome when simply installing wxMaxima pulls in a bazillion universal ports.
> 
> There are variants for that, you are not forced to build +universal, are you?

Yes, you're forced to build universal, because wxWidgets 2.8 requires 32-bit, so it requires its dependencies to be 32-bit; when build_arch is x86_64 that means MacPorts will rebuild the dependencies universal.


I said I would stay out of the naming debate, but:

-devel ports are supposed to be for users who want to experience the leading edge of development and try out new things before they're finalized. It should not be necessary for users to install a -devel port in order to get basic functionality, as is currently required in many cases for wxWidgets.

The fault lies with the developers of wxWidgets for waiting so long before releasing a new stable version. 2.8.0 was released December 2006. Release early, release often: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_early,_release_often

If cathedrals are going to continue to be the release strategy of the wxWidgets developers, MacPorts might be wise to try to prepare for similar situations in the future, by using numbered wxWidgets ports, and making them simultaneously installable, so that each port can declare a dependency on whichever version of wxWidgets it works with and it does not need to affect other ports.


Or, if there are no ports that require wxWidgets earlier than 2.9, or if they can be easily patched to support 2.9, then we could update the main wxWidgets port to the current 2.9 release and forget about 2.8 already.


Let's just do something that results in users on current OS X being able to install the ports they want without fuss.