port activate ignores multiple installed versions and variants of inactive dependents

[Clemens Lang]

Hi,

----- On 11 Dec, 2014, at 22:31, Bradley Giesbrecht pixilla at macports.org wrote:

> If installation/activation of ports via dependency ignores installed inactive
> versions I think this a bug in base.
> 
> Shouldn't dependency installation take into consideration multiple inactive
> versions as "port activate" does?

No. There is a reason why we always upgrade dependencies first. Installing a
port always requires all dependencies to be at the latest state. If we didn't
do that we'd either need versioned dependencies, or rev-bumps would be
pointless.


> Without checking active versions before and after activation this user workflow
> could be dangerous:
> $ sudo port -q deactivate sqlgrey postfix
> $ sudo port -q activate sqlgrey

Dangerous in that you might end up with a more recent version of postfix than you
had before, yes. I don't think this is a very dangerous situation – in fact I
think the exact opposite situation might actually be more dangerous.

-- 
Clemens Lang