Port insists on installing gcc40 during upgrade

[Denis Bueno]

Of the gcc packages, I only have gcc42 installed:

    $ sudo port installed | grep gcc
    gcc42 @4.2.0_0+darwin_8 (active)

According to port, gcc40 has no dependents (I just selfupdate'd and sync'd):

    $ sudo port dependents gcc40
    gcc40 has no dependents!

Imagine my surprise, then, when I find that:

    $ sudo port -v upgrade installed
    --->  Fetching gcc40
    --->  gcc-core-4.0.4.tar.bz2 doesn't seem to exist in
/opt/local/var/db/dports/distfiles/gcc40
    --->  Attempting to fetch gcc-core-4.0.4.tar.bz2 from
ftp://gcc.gnu.org/pub/gcc/releases/gcc-4.0.4/

And it proceeds to compile gcc40.

Clearly I am misunderstanding dependents (or misunderstanding just how ports
decides when to install a package).  The gcc40 compile fails, too, but
that's less of a problem (though still obviously a problem).

...

After rooting around the Trac bug list, the ticket at
http://trac.macports.org/projects/macports/ticket/12000 seems to be my
problem.  (I have octave 2.9.9 installed.)  The root cause appears to have
been judged as upgrading not taking variants into account.  There is a patch
which purports to fix this behavior; is this likely to be incorporated soon?

Thanks.

-Denis