Why is Python 2.7 dependent on db46 and only db46

[Vincent Habchi]

Hi there,

I recently had a look on the smörgåsbord of ports installed on my computer, and I found out three different versions of db: db44 db46 db48. Turns out a lot of ports have a fixed dependency on one of the db* ports, which in turn implies that a lot of different versions of db4 have to be installed – to no avail, since those ports provide the same service; worse, db5* and the most recent db6* are, it seems, totally ignored. Example of this is Python27 that requires db46, but works fine with db60.

In new the port cyrus5-imapd I committed this morning, I wrote some dynamic code to detect the installed db* version and go along with it, instead of forcing the installation of another version. Could this mechanism be extended, maybe though a port class?

Thanks,
Vincent