How add variant when upgrading octave

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On May 16, 2016, at 6:27 AM, Joshua Root <jmr at macports.org> wrote:

> 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

I just had the same problem (again!). When I do 

sudo port upgrade octave +gfortran

As Josh suggests, I get

Error: fftw-3: Variant gcc48 conflicts with gfortran
Error: Unable to open port: Error evaluating variants

Now what?

Jerry