port:openal(-soft) vs. OpenAL.framework?

[René J.V. Bertin]

Hi,

Some of you may have seen that I've uploaded an update to port:openal-soft to trac, bringing the port to the current v1.18.1 . I've also filed a ticket for a build conflict in Qt5's QtMultiMedia component, which is supposed to build against the system OpenAL.framework but which picks up $prefix/lib/libopenal.dylib if it is present, which is probably not a very good idea.
At the same time, openal-soft's configuration utility uses Qt5. My proposed upgrade makes building it optional but it's still a considerable cost if you need it but don't have any other use for Qt5.

As to port:openal, it looks to be severely outdated and I don't get the impression that the official openal.org ships the sources for even the version I have in my OS X 10.9 OpenAL.framework .

Currently, the portfiles below contain port:openal or port:openal-soft :

games/alienarena/Portfile
multimedia/sfml/Portfile
multimedia/mpv/Portfile
graphics/SimGear/Portfile

and more importantly:
gnome/gstreamer010-gst-plugins-bad/Portfile
gnome/gstreamer1-gst-plugins-bad/Portfile

If any of these ports' maintainers read this: is it really necessary to require the openal port unconditionnally, is Apple's OpenAL.framework not "good enough" at least on more recent OS X versions?

Thanks,
René