Non versioned ports

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Aug 23, 2014, at 5:41 AM, Vincent wrote:

> I have completed the Portfile for two new libraries I could eventually add to our already swell collection. Except that these two ports, out of which one depends on the other, are not official releases but trunk versions. In fact, official releases do exist, but they are outdated and incompatible with the recent versions of other libraries they themselves depend on. So, in order for both to compile, I absolutely need the pull in the most recent code.
> 
> What am I supposed to do? Wait until the developers tag a new, stable release of both ports, or add the ports as such, maybe warning the potential users that these are – at least until the new release — experimental and ‘use at your own risks?’.

My opinion would be that you can add the ports this way, with their development versions, without any special notice, since it sounds like their latest stable versions will not work the way you need them to work. You can make up a version number to put in the version field. If the project does not have any version numbers at all, you could use the commit date in YYYYMMDD format. If they do have version numbers, you could use a version number between the current stable version number and the upcoming new version. For example, if the latest stable release is 2.3.0, and you want to use development code that will eventually become 2.4.0, you could invent version number 2.3.99. Once a new stable version is available, switch to that and use only stable versions from then on.