trying to understand the --no-exec activate option (on by default?)

[René J.V. Bertin]

On Thursday November 29 2018 21:48:24 Rainer Müller wrote:

> To clarify the double negative here, the post-activate phase will be
> executed by default.

That's what I understand from the embedded help but also what I'm trying to confirm in the code.
As said, I'm not seeing output from post-activate phases when I reactivate a port after having deactivated it.

>From what I understand the default is that the corresponding option variable ("ports_activate_no-exec") isn't even defined. It's unclear to me what the other 2 expressions check for in that same if in proc action_activate; maybe they're the reason my post-activate phases aren't executed after each activation?