[macports-ports] branch master updated: grep: add new variant to install as ggrep

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Jun 21, 2018, at 03:44, George Plymale II wrote:

>>>> Why are we offering this? Selecting this variant would break any port that depends on this port. We should strive not to provide users with ways of shooting themselves in the foot.
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> Besides this breaking change, it would be good to have this port be consistent with findutils and coretuils (and maybe the other GNU ports) which install with —program-prefix=g into $prefix/bin and have the non-g prefix in $prefix/libexec/gnubin so one can have $prefix/libexec/bin in $PATH and get the GNU versions if one wants them.
>> 
>> It is true that that is how most of the other GNU ports work. However, that would also break all of the ports that depend on the grep port. It would at least be more consistent than having this variant, but all the ports that depend on grep would need modifications to be compatible with your proposed change.
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Sorry, I contributed this change to scratch my own itch of needing to
> not override the system grep. Honestly, I didn't think about
> compatibility with other ports so that is a mistake on my part. I see
> four ways of addressing this problem:
> 
> - just modify the other ports which deal with the grep port to be
>  compatible with this change
> - do what Blair suggests and make this port consistent with other GNU
>  ports, as well as fixing compatibility as mentioned by Ryan
> - add a warning to this variant, saying that it could cause issues
> - eliminate this change altogether (I really hope this isn't chosen)
> 
> I think the first or second solution above would be the best. Which
> other ports reference the grep port anyway? Of course, if anyone has
> better ideas, feel welcome to chime in.

Your change makes the names of the programs that the grep port installs unpredictable -- they will be different depending on whether or not the user has selected the variant. Therefore, no other port or script can be certain of the names under which the programs have been installed. We definitely must revert the addition of the variant, so that the port can be relied upon to always install programs with predictable names.

We then have two choices. Choice 1 is to do nothing else and leave it as it was before your change. Choice 2 is to do what Blair suggests and make the port install the programs with the "g" prefix, and put unprefixed symlinks in the gnubin directory, as other GNU ports do. This would require changes to the two dozen other ports that declare dependencies on grep. If you wish to undertake that task, that's fine.

The way that I identify the portfiles that depend on grep is:

port file all | sort -u | xargs grep -El '^[^#]+:grep\W'