netcdf orphaned; Fortran integration

[Michael Sternberg]

Hello folks,

The netcdf port seems orphaned:

	http://trac.macports.org/projects/macports/browser/trunk/dports/ 
science/netcdf/Portfile

As per  http://metadir.andrew.cmu.edu/mailsearch.html  the previous  
maintainer is no longer affiliated with CMU.  I'll see if I can  
follow up more tomorrow.


The reason I'm asking is because I need the fortran interface for a  
user's code, and perhaps later plug in more recent versions.  I  
managed to locally add a variant "+ifort" using "port edit", which  
relies on the Intel Fortran compiler, and the package's regression  
test "make test" passes, explicitly verifying the fortran interface  
as well.


Now for the bleeding newbie questions:


Q1: Is it OK to use a commercial compiler?

Q2: What's the canonical way to express that?
	- note dependency (if any)?
	- note compiler version?  (ifc7, ifc8, and ifort9 are notably  
different)

Q3: Where do I submit a patch to a non-maintainer?  If I go to:

	http://trac.macports.org/projects/macports/report

     and click on the big "New Ticket" (not obvious as a link, BTW),  
I get:

	http://trac.macports.org/projects/macports/newticket
	Permission Denied

	TICKET_CREATE privileges are required to perform this operation


Has the dust settled since the DarwinPorts migration?  Seems some of  
the docs are not yet migrated.

Any help appreciated - I mean, I'd like to push my patch upstream, so  
I get the benefit on other hosts without creating my own patch  
management system ;-)


Regards, Michael