Dependencies relationship to default variants?

Randall Wood randall.h.wood at alexandriasoftware.com
Fri Jul 11 02:30:44 PDT 2008


On Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 5:13 AM, Rainer Müller <raimue at macports.org> wrote:
> 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?

Not using Apple's kerberos has been known to break expected behavior.
Its not the standard Kerberos and hooks into Apple's authentication
scheme in a way that the standard Kerberos does not. I think that
authentication services needs to be one of those
the-exception-to-the-rule-is-the-rule situations like X11.

> 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
>
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>



-- 
Randall Wood
randall.h.wood at alexandriasoftware.com

"The rules are simple: The ball is round. The game lasts 90 minutes.
All the rest is just philosophy."


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