In the sbcl port I see this code: default_variants +test variant test { test.run yes test.dir ${worksrcpath}/tests test.cmd sh test.target run-tests.sh } Now, I was led to believe that this is silly and should be rewritten as follows: test.run yes test.dir ${worksrcpath}/tests test.cmd sh test.target run-tests.sh I was told that using "test.run yes" does not automatically run the tests. Rather, you must "sudo port test sbcl" if you want the tests. In light of this, why would anyone want to wrap this in a "test" variant? Who would ever want to switch it off? And isn't there a base bug that makes it so that if you install the port without the test variant, and then upgrade, the test variant gets turned on again? (I haven't tried it, but I thought I remembered hearing that.) But I see several ports with a "test" variant, so I wanted to ask if there's something I'm missing here.