Factors determining binary archivability

[Jason Liu]

So, I'm curious what factors determine whether a particular port becomes
available as a binary archive. Since the Blender port I submitted is pretty
large and complex, I'm assuming that one factor may be that a package takes
too long to build and simply times out? (The Azure builds in my PR took 2-3
hours to complete, and the Travis builds all timed out after 50 minutes.)
I've noticed that some other large/complex applications, which typically
have a long list of dependencies, also don't have binary archives, and are
always built from source on MacPorts clients (e.g., gimp, inkscape, vlc).

Is it an issue of the builders simply not being able to finish the builds
before timing out? is it the number, or maybe a certain type, of
dependencies that rules a package out? is it the project's license, as
mentioned on this page
<https://guide.macports.org/chunked/using.binaries.html>? or are there
other factors that determine whether a binary archive can be made
available? Is there anything that I can do as a portfile writer to help
encourage a package to be available as a binary download?

-- 
Jason Liu
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