#19091: php5: refactor variants into separate ports -------------------------------------+-------------------------------------- Reporter: ryandesign@… | Owner: ryandesign@… Type: enhancement | Status: new Priority: Normal | Milestone: Port Enhancements Component: ports | Version: 1.7.0 Keywords: | Port: php5, php5-devel -------------------------------------+-------------------------------------- Comment(by alakazam@…):
Variants are inconvenient because if you want to add one you have to rebuild the whole port, which for php5 takes some time. Also, ports can't depend on variants of other ports (#126). Also, once we start building and distributing binaries of ports, each additional available variant increases exponentially the number of combinations that would need to be built. If we instruct the build server only to build a few common variant combinations, then users of other variants would miss out on the benefits of using binaries.
I think these are good arguments in favor of having separate ports for php5 extensions, and I agree that this would be interesting, easier, and faster to build. Since the php5 distribution package seems to support incremental compilation/activation/usage of extensions, we should probably do this. I'm not sure about SAPI variants though, as I think it would be more complicated for users to find the correct port to build (not using variants when they're the logical choice from the user's pov isn't ideal imho).
We'll also need to compile php to load extra .ini files from an additional directory, like ${prefix}/etc/php.d, where each php extension port can put a pre-written .ini file which enables that module. I believe this is the "--with-config-file-scan-dir" configure option.
I think this would be interesting even for existing php5 extensions (eaccelerator, xdebug, etc.) which currently need to be manually enabled and disabled when un/installed. -- Ticket URL: <http://trac.macports.org/ticket/19091#comment:1> MacPorts <http://www.macports.org/> Ports system for Mac OS