On Sep 6, 2007, at 17:20, Derek Harland wrote:
On 7/09/2007, at 8:54 AM, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
Well if the goal is simultaneous installation of multiple versions of python, then a single portfile with variants is not an option, since you cannot simultaneously install multiple variant versions of a single port. Only one version of a port can be active at once. So you need separate ports, as we have now.
I agree. However would it not be possible to (theoretically) have a variant install extra files, so that something like
port install some-python-package +python2.5 +python2.4
would install files for both python2.4 and 2.5?
I'm not suggesting this as solution ... I don't think its very nice, its more a question for my own understanding of macports.
Oh. Um... well, yes, but... Most ports need to go through phases, generally configure, make and make install. Looks like ports in the python groups get to skip the configure phase, but still need a make (python setup.py build) and make install (python setup.py) phase. MacPorts is designed to do these phases once each per port, but if you wanted to build both python 2.4 and python 2.5 versions of a port, it would probably need to go through each phase twice, once for each version of python. Going through a phase more than once is not so much supported by MacPorts at this point (though some ports come to mind that try very hard to fake it; see "openssl +universal" which is quite messy and "php5 +fastcgi +apache[2]" which is less messy but still not great).