recommended "dependencies?"

[Mike Roberts]

In article <C4CACC2C-7B55-45B7-9595-B5EADFCE3A39 at macports.org>,
 Ryan Schmidt <ryandesign at macports.org> wrote:

> 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.

thanks. i'll keep that in mind.

> 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?)

specifying both would have to be disallowed.

my proposal is that the lack of a variant would be an indication that 
the user has no preference and a port-specific default can be used.

> 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.

global variants such as darwin_8 exist and seem to be useful. their 
usefulness diminishes beyond those few pre-defined names but i don't 
believe this has to be the case.

/mike