[MacPorts] #69379: storing port configuration settings under the workdir

[MacPorts]

#69379: storing port configuration settings under the workdir
-------------------------+--------------------
 Reporter:  RJVB         |      Owner:  (none)
     Type:  enhancement  |     Status:  new
 Priority:  Normal       |  Milestone:
Component:  base         |    Version:
 Keywords:               |       Port:
-------------------------+--------------------
 As a port maintainer/dev I am probably not alone in invoking the different
 build phases separately and repeatedly. In that context I've been running
 into a convenience issue that didn't exist before.

 It's become more and more rare that recent ports build with the system
 compiler on my older OS version, so logic has been added to get ports to
 use a recent enough compiler. In my own ports that need this I add some of
 my own logic that will cause the most recent installed and sufficient
 compiler to be selected (IMHO the most justifiable approach) but even that
 is not always what I want because clang has long history of getting slower
 and more resource-hungry with every release.
 I can't remember any names but the past few weeks I've encountered at
 least 1 port that seems to have portfile code that is conditional on the
 selected compiler version.

 Long story short: in the vast majority of cases the `port configure` phase
 will set up everything so that subsequent build or destroot attempts don't
 need to specify anything except the port name and requested variants. I
 think it would be nice to store the most common additional relevant
 commandline arguments too during the configure step, and restore them
 before parsing the Portfile. In my case that would be `configure.compiler`
 and `configureccache`.

 This would make it a bit easier (= less typing) to continue working on
 getting a port to build from a different (e.g. remote) terminal.

 It should also allow to configure several ports and then run a combined
 `port -np build A [+Avariants] B [+bVariants]` each with the intended
 definition for at least `configure.compiler` rather than having to specify
 it for each port. (In my experience you cannot just set
 `configure.compiler` at the end of the commandline and hope it will apply
 to all ports to be processed.)

 As I said above, it's a minor issue of pure convenience but it shouldn't
 be too hard to implement and could use the existing statefile mechanisms.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://trac.macports.org/ticket/69379>
MacPorts <https://www.macports.org/>
Ports system for macOS