invisible universal variant and merger_must_run_binaries

[Ken Cunningham]

> On Feb 2, 2021, at 11:22 PM, Ryan Schmidt <ryandesign at macports.org> wrote:
> 
> On Feb 3, 2021, at 01:12, Ken Cunningham wrote:
> 
>>> But if "his system will never see that port could be universal" then how could he "download and install that port +universal" in the first place?
>> 
>> that is the crux of it, indeed. 
>> 
>> Should our poor soul, who cannot build the port +universal, still be able to download it +universal from the buildbot and use it, if it exists (built by the arm64 machine).
> 
> At present, no, that would not be possible.
> 
> I consider the buildbot a "nice to have". It makes life easier by precompiling things but it is not essential. When something is not available precompiled, MacPorts builds from source. If something doesn't build correctly from source, let's fix that.
> 

OK — for users out there, then, we should begin to make it clear that building +universal on a BigSur Intel machine is not going to work out for a number of ports, and although they might find some ports can build universal on BigSur Intel, for comprehensive +universal support, they should expect to use BigSur arm64.

That is fine with me — IMHO nobody should really be putting anything out that hasn’t been actually tried on an actual BigSur arm64 machine anyway.

But should be clear to people what to expect.

Ken