*-devel ports for llvm and gcc

[René J. V. Bertin]

Ryan Schmidt wrote:


>> is released as a stable version it should be renamed to llvm-3.9. The
>> ports llvm-3.9 and llvm-3.9-devel are still drop-in replacements.
> 
> This makes it much more difficult on developers when the time comes for a port
> to graduate from development to stable status, as I'm currently doing with
> gcc6. I don't want to impose that extra work on myself or other developers.

Why? As you said yourself all that's needed is using a path:-style dependency. 
That's hardly extra work, and it's probably a good idea to leave that style in 
place even after the release version of the dependency is produced. It's 
probably not because llvm 3.8.1 goes stable that there will be no 3.8.1+i that 
could be tested as a -devel port first.

The advantage of using a -devel (sub)port rather than (or in addition to) a 
category is that other ports can actually depend on the -devel port, if 
necessary. For instance, clang-3.8-devel (clang-devel-3.8?) would probably have 
to depend on llvm-3.8-devel (llvm-devel-3.8).

Also, -devel subports can in many cases be subports of the main/release port 
because they most likely share a lot of code. I do that all the time with my KF5 
ports.

R.