[MacPorts] #19091: php5: refactor variants into separate ports

[MacPorts]

#19091: php5: refactor variants into separate ports
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 Reporter:  ryandesign@…             |       Owner:  ryandesign@…           
     Type:  enhancement              |      Status:  new                    
 Priority:  Normal                   |   Milestone:  Port Enhancements      
Component:  ports                    |     Version:  1.7.0                  
 Keywords:                           |        Port:  php5, php5-devel       
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Comment(by alakazam@…):

 > Variants are inconvenient because if you want to add one you have to
 rebuild the whole port, which for php5 takes some time. Also, ports can't
 depend on variants of other ports (#126). Also, once we start building and
 distributing binaries of ports, each additional available variant
 increases exponentially the number of combinations that would need to be
 built. If we instruct the build server only to build a few common variant
 combinations, then users of other variants would miss out on the benefits
 of using binaries.

 I think these are good arguments in favor of having separate ports for
 php5 extensions, and I agree that this would be interesting, easier, and
 faster to build. Since the php5 distribution package seems to support
 incremental compilation/activation/usage of extensions, we should probably
 do this.

 I'm not sure about SAPI variants though, as I think it would be more
 complicated for users to find the correct port to build (not using
 variants when they're the logical choice from the user's pov isn't ideal
 imho).

 > We'll also need to compile php to load extra .ini files from an
 additional directory, like ${prefix}/etc/php.d, where each php extension
 port can put a pre-written .ini file which enables that module. I believe
 this is the "--with-config-file-scan-dir" configure option.

 I think this would be interesting even for existing php5 extensions
 (eaccelerator, xdebug, etc.) which currently need to be manually enabled
 and disabled when un/installed.

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Ticket URL: <http://trac.macports.org/ticket/19091#comment:1>
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