startupitem.inetdcompat or newbie base hacking!

I think it would be desirable to have a startupitem that supports inetdcompatibility in MacPorts. It seems to me it wouldn't be that hard since the heavy lifting was already done in MP 1.2. So I've hacked the portstartupitem.tcl file for some new startupitems and I want to test it so I tried replacing the current copy in ${prefix} with the modified file but it isn't recognizing my new variables. What is the proper way to test a new portstartupitem.tcl file? Mark