Mm. I thought about this for a while before submitting the patch. Thing is, cracklib's functionality is severely reduced without that dictionary, and it seemed to be the upstream maintainer's intention to include it, which is why it is the default. Your idea makes quite a lot of sense, though, and I will include it soon. FYI: the macports guide doesn't mention anything about the upgrade issue you mentioned above in the variants section, which is why I didn't consider that aspect.
The guide mentions it here:
http://guide.macports.org/#reference.variants.user-selected
"Due to a bug in the current MacPorts base default_variants shouldn't be used at the moment as they cause problems while upgrading ports."
Heh -- that'll teach me to not double-check before I spout something like that again. Mouth? Meet foot. You two will be having a great time together for a while... =o) -- June Tate-Gans | Don't try to outweird me, three-eyes. I get stranger things www.theonelab.com | than you free with my breakfast cereal. -- Zaphod Beeblebrox