On May 8, 2007, at 5:48 AM, Marc André Selig wrote:

I just tried that. It seems not to work quite as anticipated.

$ sudo port mpkg gnucash +guile16

... results in port packaging guile instead of guile16, which makes
the resulting package useless.

It seems as if port mpkg follows the original dependencies specified
in the port, not those in the variant given, nor even those in the
default variant.

I believe you have indeed found a bug! The pkg / mpkg creation code was written a long time ago and I would not be at all surprised to learn that it has not kept pace with other changes in macports. The code for all the packaging procedures lives in macports/base/src/package1.0/ and represent an excellent learning opportunity / potential contribution for anyone. :-)