How do we know what each variant does?

[Jeremy Lavergne]

> I have never used them, probably because I don't have an answer yet to that question.
> 
> What exactly are variants of a given port, and what are their description ? As an example, I don't understand what the X11, the GUI, the NO-GUI variants are for the PSPP port, since the standard installation (no variant) provides both non-GUI and GUI modes, the latter with X11.

`port variants ...` will list out the variants and descriptions of them. For PSPP[-devel] they are:

pspp has the variants:
   doc: Build documentation
   help: Provide in-application help via yelp
     * conflicts with no_gui
   ncurses: Enable terminal resizing
   no_graph: Disable graphing features
   no_gui: Disable PSPPIRE, the graphical interface
     * conflicts with help
   postgres: Enables reading of postgresql databases
   universal: Build for multiple architectures

pspp-devel has the variants:
   doc: Build documentation
[+]graph: Enable graphing features
     * conflicts with no_graph
[+]gui: Build PSPPIRE, the graphical interface
     * conflicts with no_gui
   help: Provide in-application help via yelp
     * conflicts with no_gui
     * requires gui
   no_graph: Obsolete
     * conflicts with graph
   no_gui: Obsolete
     * conflicts with gui
   postgres: Enables reading of postgresql databases
[+]quartz: Support for native Mac OS X graphics
     * conflicts with x11
   universal: Build for multiple architectures
   x11: Enable X11 support
     * conflicts with quartz


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