[MacPorts] #54386: variants set with defaut_variant don't propagate the same way variants set by the user does.

[MacPorts]

#54386: variants set with defaut_variant don't propagate the same way variants set
by the user does.
--------------------+-----------------
 Reporter:  RJVB    |      Owner:
     Type:  defect  |     Status:  new
 Priority:  Normal  |  Milestone:
Component:  base    |    Version:
 Keywords:          |       Port:
--------------------+-----------------
 I'm not sure if this is a bug or a feature, or something I'm doing wrong
 (so fee free to change the ticket type).

 Consider an audio-related `port:foo` depending (directly or indirectly) on
 `port:portaudio` in a future in which that port has moved Jack support to
 a `+jack` variant (as I should have proposed by now). Foo does

 {{{
 variant jack description "Enable the use of Jack" {
     # whatever else we need to do for Jack support
 }
 # we enable Jack support by default, but don't need to make it a
 # hard requirement on all dependencies
 default_variants +jack
 }}}


 I for one would expect that the port will behave the same way when
 installing from scratch if one does

 {{{
 > port install foo
 }}}

 or

 {{{
 > port install foo +jack
 }}}

 because that's how I interpret the intended effect of the default_variants
 statement.

 When you test as construct like this with `port rdeps` it would appear
 that variants set by `default_variants` don't propagate the same way, at
 least not for indirect dependencies on `port:portaudio`. IOW, if portaudio
 is an indirect dependency of port:foo, I'm seeing (as expected)

 {{{
 > port rdeps foo +jack
 ...
  portaudio
   jack
 ...
 }}}

 All other things being equal I'd expect to see the same output when I do
 `port rdeps foo`, but in reality the output from that command is the same
 as the output of `port rdeps foo -jack`.

 If this is intended, is there a way to set a variant programmatically so
 that it propagates? I already tried various approaches (including
 `variant_set jack` but if that function does anything it's done in the
 wrong scope).

--
Ticket URL: <https://trac.macports.org/ticket/54386>
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