[MacPorts] #39897: Add 'optional' or 'recommended' metadata tags to portfile spec.

[MacPorts]

#39897: Add 'optional' or 'recommended' metadata tags to portfile spec.
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  Reporter:  c.herbig@…   |      Owner:  macports-tickets@…
      Type:  enhancement  |     Status:  new
  Priority:  Normal       |  Milestone:
 Component:  base         |    Version:
Resolution:               |   Keywords:
      Port:               |
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Comment (by c.herbig@…):

 Replying to [comment:6 larryv@…]:

 > If suppressing recommendations for already-installed ports isn’t
 terribly important, can’t this just be handled with notes?
 It is (in my opinion at least) mainly a matter of convention and tidiness.
 In my portfile for gnome-chemistry-utils I included a notes section as
 follows:
 {{{
 notes \
 "Recommended supplementary ports:
     gnome-themes-standard  provides the default Gnome Adwaita theme"
 }}}
 Although it accomplishes the task of informing the user that there is an
 additional recommended port, I think it would be better in the end for a
 standardized method to communicate this information.  Additionally, using
 a data tag would allow things like comment 4, or in the future for
 MacPorts to offer to proceed with installation of recommended ports if the
 user agrees, similar to what is done in certain linux distributions.  It
 may also prove useful to search through ports and dependencies based on
 what they were recommended by.

 The reason that I don't think variants are a good solution to this problem
 is that variants get passed down to dependencies, and later trying to
 change to a different variant can cause lots of errors with those
 dependencies who were installed with, and insist on having the previous
 variant.  It can turn into a matter that a user may decide to simply not
 bother with altogether.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://trac.macports.org/ticket/39897#comment:9>
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