+universal for x864+arm64 on Macintel

[René J.V. Bertin]

Hi,

Just an observation:

When I tried to test the new +universal variant of a x864_64 + arm64 port (port:VLC) installing from official DMGs on my 10.9.5 Mac I discovered that the variant wasn't added because the port only supported the current build architecture. Whaaat? It took me a while to realise that maybe "base" knew I can't build arm64 binaries (supposedly; never tried) and thus ignored the arm64 entry in the port's supported_archs list. The variant did appear when I added i386 support (bogus in this case as the universal DMG doesn't contain i386 binaries).

Such intelligence from "base" is probably a good thing but somewhere I feel that it's inappropriate in this port's kind of situation. The universal DMG exists after all, and my port installs from there, not by building anything. Is there a way to override the logic and force the +universal variant?

The problem isn't necessarily entirely moot; port:VLC installs a library that can be used by 3rd party (non-MacPorts) applications, and it doesn't strike as impossible to build arm64 binaries on a system where MacPorts considers that to be impossible.

Thanks,
R.