Should I expect a +quartz variant to propagate to dependencies, and overrule existing variants?

[Jim DeLaHunt]

Thank you for the reply, Ryan. This is very helpful.

On 2022-06-02 19:33, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
> On Jun 1, 2022, at 17:31, Jim DeLaHunt wrote:
>
>> Should I expect a +quartz variant to propagate to dependencies, and overrule existing variants?
> Variants specified on the command line when installing a port propagate to any dependencies that have not yet been installed. They do not propagate to any dependencies that have already been installed.

That is good to know, thanks.

I looked at the Guide to see if this behaviour was described. In my 
opinion it is not described adequately. I've opened a ticket against the 
Guide, " Guide 3.2.1: Say that variant specification on port install 
does not overrule existing ports" <https://trac.macports.org/ticket/65299>.


> You can add a variant to an already-installed port by using "sudo port upgrade --enforce-dependencies someport +somevariant".

Clever!  I see that this is documented in 
<https://guide.macports.org/#using.port.upgrade>. I had not noticed 
that. I guess I have not read the Guide diligently.


>> …Thus I succeeded in fumbling my way through installing gimp +quartz despite dependencies already present with the wrong variants, but it was a bit messy and confusing. Should I expect MacPorts to do a better job with this situation?  If so, maybe I should file a ticket against some of these ports, to see if portfile changes would avoid the problems.
> This undesirable experience is why we recommend users choose whether to use +x11 or +quartz before installing any ports, or uninstall all ports and reinstall them if changing one's mind after having installed ports.

Interesting! Where is this advice documented? I certainly did not know 
it before. (But them, I guess I have not read the Guide diligently.) The 
place where these instructions would have done me good is in the 
Migration instructions: <https://trac.macports.org/wiki/Migration>.

I just looked. I have 27 ports with +x11 variants specified. 4 of those 
ports have +quartz+x11: cairo, cairomm, pango, pangomm. For all 4 of 
them, +x11 and +quartz appear to be default variants, so I suppose they 
can coexist. But that leaves me with 23 ports with +x11 to deal with. At 
least some of them (e.g. ffmpeg) have no +quartz variant. Can such ports 
coexist as +x11 variants with the rest of a collection of +quartz 
variant ports?

I see my port gtk3 is installed as +x11 but not as +quartz. I suspect 
that is not what I want. Thank you for the heads-up.

Thank you again for the explanation. Best regards,
     —Jim DeLaHunt