recommended "dependencies?"

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Feb 9, 2007, at 07:25, Mike Roberts wrote:

> Ryan Schmidt <ryandesign at macports.org> wrote:
>
>> I would say creating variants for this optional functionality would
>> be best. It would be bad if two different people ran the same command
>> ("sudo port install lyx") and ended up with different functionality,
>> just because one of them had, for example, the latex2rtf port already
>> installed and the other did not.
>>
>> You should create a variant for latex2rtf support, and for any other
>> such optional features. If the variant is specified, add a dependency
>> on the latex2rtf port and build lyx with support for latex2rtf. If
>> the variant is not specified, lyx *must not* build with latex2rtf
>> support, even if the latex2rtf port is already installed. (Use a --
>> without-latex2rtf switch, or whatever the lyx project provides to do
>> that).
>
> that sounds fine, though it seems to me that the proper way to do  
> things
> would be to have +rtf and +no-rtf variants to specify specific desires
> and the lack of a variant would be the default for the port. it seems
> that to do otherwise would weaken the usefulness of the variants.conf
> file.

First, I would say that a variant name should not include a hyphen.  
That's problematic. Use an underscore if you want to separate words.

Then, I would say that you should have either an +rtf variant, or a  
+no_rtf variant, but never both. (What would it do if you did not  
specify any variant?)

I have never used the variants.conf file so I have no comment on that  
feature. Well, maybe I do: the comment would be that variants vary  
from port to port, so I can't see any usefulness in a global way to  
specify variants that should be used for all ports.


> could one use variants to implement an abstract port? for example,  
> could
> i write a port called abstract/tex-previewer and have different  
> variants
> to select dependencies for aqua/TeXShop and x11/advi? perhaps an +aqua
> variant to specify that a default aqua-enabled previewer should be
> used...

I don't know about that.