GSoC 2015 Idea Discussion

[Rainer Müller]

On 2015-03-09 12:30, Clemens Lang wrote:
> 
>> Are there stats what percentage of the current ports build without Xcode
>> installed? I have a hunch you'll find that a good part do depend on the SDK if
>> not only because Qt (and presumable GTk{2,3}) use CoreFoundation and Carbon ...
> 
> No, there are no stats, simply because we don't know. Personal experience says
> almost all of my ports built without Xcode when upgrading to Yosemite, where I
> did not install Xcode on purpose to test exactly that.
> 
> Considering homebrew does not require Xcode, that's exactly what I would have
> expected as well.

My idea would be to have a new type of dependency to declare a port
needs Xcode or a specific SDK. Something like this:

  depends_build    tool:xcode

>> So maybe it could (should) be part of the project to figure out during port
>> development whether a port requires Xcode? (because I presume most port
>> developers will have it installed and thus cannot easily do the obvious test).
> 
> That's exactly where trace mode comes into play. It should be used during
> development to see if the port builds without Xcode present (by actually hiding
> the files shipped with Xcode).

And if it is required, it should then propose to add the required
dependency.

Rainer