variants question

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Jan 7, 2007, at 17:28, belinda thom wrote:

> How am I to know if I should be installing a port w/no extra  
> variants used?
>
> In particular, I want to install subversion, whose info is:
>
> --------
>
> 32 % port info subversion
> subversion 1.4.2, devel/subversion (Variants: mod_dav_svn, no_neon,  
> no_bdb, mac_os_x_server_mod_dav_svn, tools, darwin_7)
> http://subversion.tigris.org/
>
> Subversion is a version control system designed to be as similar to  
> cvs(1) as possible, while fixing many outstanding problems with cvs 
> (1).
>
> Library Dependencies: expat, neon, apr, apr-util, db44
> Maintainers: dluke at geeklair.net
>
> -------
>
> I am uncertain how to determine what these things are (e.g. tools).  
> I know I don't want the server, but the others mean nothing to me.

+mod_dav_svn builds you the Apache 2 module of that name. If you want  
to serve a Subversion repository with Apache 2, you need this  
variant. Since you said you don't want a server, you don't need this.

+no_neon builds Subversion without the neon library. Neon is for  
connecting to http and https Subversion servers. If you want to  
access repositories served with http or https protocols, do not use  
the +no_neon variant.

+no_bdb builds Subversion without the BerkeleyDB library. BerkeleyDB  
is one of the two possible ways a repository can be stored on disk,  
though no longer the default way. Since you said you're not hosting a  
repository yourself, you don't need BerkeleyDB, so you can use this  
variant. However, if you really want to avoid having BerkeleyDB on  
your system (as I do), you will also need to first build the apr-util  
port with the +no_bdb variant. Otherwise you get an apr-util which  
will itself pull in BerkeleyDB.

+mac_os_x_server_mod_dav_svn I believe builds the Apache 2 module for  
the Mac OS X Server version of Apache 2, instead of for the MacPorts  
version of Apache 2 as the +mod_dav_svn variant does. Since you're  
not planning to run a server, and probably don't have Mac OS X  
Server, you don't need this variant.

+tools installs some additional tools that are provided with the  
Subversion source code. Specifically, it installs everything listed  
here into corresponding directories in /opt/local/share/subversion:

http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/contrib/

http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/tools/

For example, I find the svn_load_dirs.pl script helpful.



On Jan 7, 2007, at 18:25, John Labovitz wrote:

> I will say that from experience you will probably want  
> +mod_dav_svn, as it provides access to WebDAV-hosted repositories,  
> which includes many public SVN repos.  I've tried building  
> Subversion with +no_neon and +no_bdb, but it either caused problems  
> later or didn't make any obvious difference.

Actually, mod_dav_svn lets you *serve* repositories over WebDAV. To  
*access* WebDAV repositories, all you need is neon (that is, you want  
to *not* specify +no_neon).