bin: dependencies not working at all?

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Jan 30, 2020, at 18:32, Ken Cunningham wrote:

> In the portfile, it has
> 
>    depends_run         bin:perl:perl5 port:llvm_select
> 
> This means (to me) look for a binary named perl somewhere in the path, and install perl5 if there isn’t one. 
> 
> Of course, there always is a binary named “perl” in the path, so the depends itself is a bit redundant, but at any rate, with all ports uninstalled, the system perl is active:

It's not redundant. It communicates to MacPorts and to anyone reading the Portfile that the port uses the perl binary. Trace mode might otherwise issue a warning about that. It also hypothetically allows the port to be used on an operating system that does not provide perl. This might not be so hypothetical in the future: Apple has already announced that a future version of macOS will no longer be shipped with scripting languages:

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos_release_notes/macos_catalina_10_15_release_notes?language=objc#3318257

So, as always, our guidance is to declare your ports' dependencies properly and fully.