subports * prepend?

[Peter Danecek]

Hi all, 

two questions:

(1)
I am working on a port for iRods. This software package would provides a server and a set of clients. Currently I am interested only in the client part (for those who might know the product: icommands and fuse) and there might be no need for the server part after all, but how knows. So I would like to anticipate this possibility.

As the ports (server + 1* clients) would share substantial parts Portfile code (it is built from one single package), I guess it is a good idea to use subports for this. I have little experience with this, but I think one could come up with something like this:

irods
	The main port itself, either meta port or server port w/ dependency on clients?
	A port which is not supposed to be used directly, like is the case for example for the py-* ports?

irods-server
	for the server part

irods-clients
	all clients (use variants to switch on parts?)

irods-icmds / irods-client-icmds / irods-icommands
irods-fuse / irods-client-fuse
	for the various clients separated into different subports

Maybe at some point it might be helpful to separate a lib subport as well, but this probably depend on the project itself.

So what are the pros/cons in doing the one o the other? Any guidelines for the port naming?

How to deal with the main port if it is supposed to do nothing? Do I need to disable all phases or is the intended use different? Should it provide just a message to the user (any good example for this?). I was looking a bit around i the repo, but found no example which fits exactly the above situations.

(2)
Am I correct that there are no *-prepend equivalents to *-append? Is there a way the have this functionality? I was thinking to do something like:

    long_description-perpend \
        This subport provides the i-commands client. 

Where the generally description of the system is given in the main port.

Thanks for any comment!
~petr

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: smime.p7s
Type: application/pkcs7-signature
Size: 1762 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/macports-dev/attachments/20131002/51f17810/attachment.p7s>