<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Apr 11, 2016 at 5:07 PM, Daniel J. Luke <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:dluke@geeklair.net" target="_blank">dluke@geeklair.net</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><span class="">On Apr 11, 2016, at 5:02 PM, David Strubbe <<a href="mailto:dstrubbe@macports.org">dstrubbe@macports.org</a>> wrote:<br>
> I agree, but the question is what to do when the port does have variants. Consider, for example, ports with Fortran compiler variants that enable optional Fortran support, such as fftw-3. The current typical situation is that a port requiring fftw-3 with Fortran will waste time installing the default fftw-3 without Fortran, then give an error that it should have been installed with Fortran. By contrast, if the default variant could be passed on, fftw-3 would be installed with the needed Fortran support in the first place.<br>
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</span>unless fftw-3 was already installed in which case it still needs to give an error that it should have been installed differently.<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Sure, that is exactly what currently does happen, and I would not propose making any change in that respect.</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><span class="">
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</span>That would depend on how it's implemented (and what do you do if the port is installed with a different set of variants already? What if it's installed with conflicting variants?)<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>The implementation I propose is: pass on default variants like for user-selected variants, nothing more or less. Then of course you would get errors in the case you mention, just as you do right now.</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
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> Since the dependency engine does not consider them, that is why it would be very helpful to pass them down as it would solve many of the issues about "dependency on a variant" that are always being complained about on this list (such as the scenario I describe above).<br>
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</span>... but it wouldn't be a complete solution to the problem (and there are other possible solutions that /would/ be).<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Of course it's not a full solution, but this seems like a fairly simple advance that will solve some problems.</div></div></div></div>