On 21/08/2007, at 02:55, Landon Fuller wrote:
I don't see any advantage to adding complexity here. I believe we should write something like this up in the guide: The default installation of the software should be as feature complete, out of the box, as is possible. Variants should only be used for enabling incompatible options, or *expensive* features that most individuals will not need.
+1 from me. As I understand it, the design philosophy of MacPorts from the beginning was "Principle of Least Surprise", and that went for the ports as well as the core MacPorts code. I can't imagine many things more frustrating to an ordinary user than installing a program that they thought had localised text, which they wanted because their English wasn't that strong, only to discover that it didn't install that way by default. The same thing goes for other usual features that can optionally be disabled. The more knowledgable users amongst us can always turn off things we don't want or need; the same can't be said for less advanced users trying to find out how to turn _on_ things that they want or need (though for some reasons, like security, it may be prudent to try to save users from themselves). Now I don't mean to say that I don't like Rainer's other idea of being able to set MacPorts-wide variant options; that actually appeals to me a lot. Such a mechanism, however, is orthogonal to the concern at hand, which is about what should be enabled by default, and I agree with Landon on that. I can't help but think that that sort of thinking goes a long way towards the reputation for ease of use enjoyed by Mac OS and the software that runs on it, and I for one would want to avoid denting that as much as possible. Kind regards, Maun Suang -- Boey Maun Suang (Boey is my surname) Email: boeyms at macports dot org