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Thanks for the clarification, I think you are kind of right. But it will always hit someone not affected by the update. For example, changing depends_* inside some variants and incrementing the revsion forces all users to recompile - even if they don't use this variant...

And yet, incrementing the revision is the correct thing to do, if doing so will fix the install for even just a few users, even at the risk of unnecessarily rebuilding the port for others. For example, perl5.8 was updated from revision 1 to 2 in r34508. As I understand it, the change was irrelevant for those using gcc 4.0 (i.e. at least all Mac users), but was necessary for those using gcc 4.2 (perhaps Linux or FreeBSD users). Oh well.

I don't think we're all have the same understanding of when the port revision number should be incremented. If there are guidelines we could all agree to it could be documented, and (along with some nagging) we'd probably see a lot less variance, not that automation wouldn't be fine too. Mark