+x11, and +quartz variants (or a dangerous idea)

[Ernest Prabhakar]

Hi Randall,

On Tiger, I would've agreed with you.  On Leopard, X11 is installed by  
default, so I don't see a lot of value in assuming it is *not* present.

-- Ernie P.

On Nov 30, 2007, at 3:10 AM, Randall Wood wrote:

> I would like to suggest that the variants +quartz and +x11 should be  
> supported where relevant, eliminating the use of the +no_x11 variant:
>
>
> +quartz	Enable building the port to render graphics using the quartz  
> engine and aqua user interface
> +x11	Enable building the port to use X11
>
>
> Furthermore, I would like to suggest that these variants should  
> never be default variants and that we should modify the macports  
> base to recognize that a port has these variants and if neither is  
> selected (either at the command line or in variants.conf) that an  
> error message should be displayed explaining that the port may be  
> installed with either: +quartz, +x11, or +quartz+x11, although some  
> ports may result in unpredicatable behavior if +quartz+x11 is used.
>
>
> Furthermore, I would like to suggest that the +no_x11 variant and  
> the +no_quartz (if it is used at all) variants should be actively  
> discouraged.
>
>
> Background:
>
>
> I have removed X11 from my laptop and am building (albeit slowly)  
> and using applications that I used to run under X11 under Aqua or am  
> using an Aqua-based (roughly) equivilent application. This has  
> revealed a number of instances of ports assuming that X11 is  
> installed on a Mac OS X box, when that assumition is or should be  
> false, such as when the upstream project is supporting Quartz-only  
> builds, or when the project actually only really cares if GTK+ is  
> installed, but the port hauls in X-based dependencies anyway. Some  
> ports even build both the X11 and Quartz libraries for the port, but  
> then only advertize to subsequent and dependent builds only the  
> Quartz library.
>
>
> While working through this, I realized that we should assume that  
> X11 is not available on a machine and that we should re-gin our  
> ports to match that assumption. Right now the assumption for most  
> ports is that X11 is installed on a machine, and that users would  
> prefer items that provide both X11 and Quartz should always provide  
> X11 versions and should only maybe provide Quartz versions.
>
>
> Randall Wood
> randall.h.wood at alexandriasoftware.com
> http://shyramblings.blogspot.com
> "The rules are simple: The ball is round. The game lasts 90 minutes.  
> All the rest is just philosophy."
> _______________________________________________
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