variants

[Daniel J. Luke]

On Apr 12, 2016, at 7:09 PM, Mojca Miklavec <mojca at macports.org> wrote:
> Almost any given software I have
> ever compiled or packaged offers configure options and then builds the
> main binary that links against the libraries chosen during configure
> phase.

I would agree with that with the exception of software that is intended to be used by other software (collection of libraries, scripting languages, etc.)

> I'm not saying it's completely impossible to do it, but reimplementing
> this in a way that you would be able to install four submodules, each
> one with some extra files, would require quite some extra trickery.

Given that MacPorts is rather unique with the concept of variants in general, I find it hard to believe that solving it the same way other package managers must solve it is impossible.

Of course, the other obvious way to fix things is for the dependency engine to handle variants.
 
-- 
Daniel J. Luke