python portgroup best practices for apps (and how to migrate a port from module to app)

[Enrico Maria Crisostomo]

Hi all,

Yesterday a brief discussion started in macports-ports PR #6496
<https://github.com/macports/macports-ports/pull/6496> where we were
arguing about python apps best practices. Basically, a port update
submission was made to add variants to a port (httpie) to support
additional python versions. The PR author notices:

There are ports like httpie which tracks latest python version, others like
> pgcli which use variants and finally ports like py-awscli which use
> subports. None of them are usable as libraries.


I had this very doubt a few days ago, when I updated the docker-compose
port. The python portgroup sources (python-1.0.tcl) state:

# Usage:
# name should be of the form py-foo for modules
# subports pyXY-foo are declared for each XY in python.versions

# for apps (i.e. not named py-foo), no subports will be defined
# only the python.default_version will be used
# you can change that in variants if you want

I'm inclined to say, then, that the PR author approach is correct, in which
case I would also be compelled to migrate other ports I maintain (as the
aforementioned py-awscli). Also, this would have the side effect of
gracefully transition users to the latest python version supported by a
port.

What's your opinion about this?

Also, should I migrate py-awscli to awscli, what would the recommended
course of action be to guarantee that the experience of current users of
py-awscli wouldn't be negatively affected?

Thanks,
Enrico
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