How add variant when upgrading octave

[Joshua Root]

Murray Eisenberg wrote:
> Currently installed and active is:
>
>        octave @3.8.2_18+atlas+gcc48+glgui
>
> This is flagged as having available upgrade to 4.0.2_0, so I executed...
>
>       sudo port upgrade octave
>
> …which generated the error:
>
>      Error: org.macports.fetch for port octave returned: must set at least one Fortran variant
>
> Presumably I want to add fortran
>
> Is there some form of the upgrade command to do that?
>
> Or do I simply have to do a new install:
>
>    sudo port install octave @4.0.2_0+atlas+gcc48+glgui+gfortran

I think you want to do:

sudo port upgrade octave +gfortran

which will add gfortran to the currently installed set of variants while 
upgrading.

Having to manually intervene during an upgrade like this is of course 
poor UX. The problem here is that the gcc48 variant (actually all of 
gcc44, gcc45, gcc46, gcc47, gcc48, gcc49) was removed rather than 
sticking around as a "legacy compatibility variant" that just causes a 
mandatory replacement variant (presumably +gfortran here) to be selected.

- Josh