Dependencies relationship to default variants?

[Rainer Müller]

Hi,

Tabitha McNerney wrote:
> [...]
> but after installing cyrus-sasl2 (I never negate default variants), I 
> discovered this default variant:
> 
>     $ port installed cyrus-sasl2
>     The following ports are currently installed:
>       cyrus-sasl2 @2.1.21_0+kerberos (active)
>
> Woah! Kerberos is a default variant? But there is no kerberos port, 
> there is only a port named "*kerberos5*". And there is nothing regarding 
> file dependencies about making use of a vendor's (e.g., Apple's) install 
> of kerberos.

You are right, there is no dependency on kerberos5. And it is using the
Kerberos framework provided by Apple. Our current policy is not to use
system libraries, but add them to MacPorts and use it from there. I am
CC'ing the maintainers of cyrus-sasl2.

Juan, Landon, would it be possible to use kerberos5 here instead?

Dependencies are mainly set on ports. There are also other dependency
types, but dependencies on system stuff is currently not specified. For
example we don't add a dependency on Xcode to each and every port :-)

> I don't know how to interpret the meaning of the default variant in the 
> context of dependencies, given this example above.
> 
> Also, is there any way (before installing a port) to use the port 
> command-line program to request a port's default variants information? 
> Or is the only way to obtain this information to parse each port's 
> Portfile and look for it that way?

I agree with this problem, there is currently no way to see the default
variants before installing. There is already a ticket tracking this [1].

Rainer

[1] http://trac.macports.org/ticket/14178