Portfile variants vs. subports recommendation

[Frank Schima]

On Jun 12, 2014, at 8:13 PM, Jason Mitchell <jason-macports at maiar.org> wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> For projects with several forks, i.e. more than stable and devel, what
> is the preferred Portfile treatment?  Consider git-flow, which uses the
> canonical nvie GitHub (GH) repository that is inactive.  Of nvie's ~1000
> forks, at least 2 are useful:
> 
>  - petervanderdoes/gitflow: AVH Edition
>  - datasift/gitflow: HubFlow (GH tweaked, different git trigger)
> 
> Options considered:
> 
> 1. git-flow Portfile w/ nvie as default (variant), w/ +avh +hubflow;
>    each variant conflicts with others
> 2. git-flow Portfile w/ separate named subports, e.g. 
>    git-flow-{nvie,avh,hubflow}; nvie and avh conflict
> 3. combination of #1 & #2, w/ variants on default port set depends
> 
> Based on gnuradio, it seems #2 is preferred, then let the end-user
> decide.  #2 also seems easier to make gitflow variants directly on git.

Option 2 is definitely preferred. The problem with variants is that other ports cannot depend on them. At best a Portfile can use the active_variants portgroup to require a port with a non-default variant. But these will never get built on the buildbot since it only builds a port with the default variants. 


Cheers!
Frank