On Sep 25, 2012, at 13:38, Andrea D'Amore wrote:

>> 2. Even for projects that support both 2.8 and 2.9, like, say wxMaxima, the 
>> users
>> may want to compile it for 64 bits -- IMHO such support should be default. 
>> It's
>> a bit irksome when simply installing wxMaxima pulls in a bazillion universal 
>> ports.
> 
> There are variants for that, you are not forced to build +universal, are you?

Yes, you're forced to build universal, because wxWidgets 2.8 requires 32-bit, 
so it requires its dependencies to be 32-bit; when build_arch is x86_64 that 
means MacPorts will rebuild the dependencies universal.


I said I would stay out of the naming debate, but:

-devel ports are supposed to be for users who want to experience the leading 
edge of development and try out new things before they're finalized. It should 
not be necessary for users to install a -devel port in order to get basic 
functionality, as is currently required in many cases for wxWidgets.

The fault lies with the developers of wxWidgets for waiting so long before 
releasing a new stable version. 2.8.0 was released December 2006. Release 
early, release often: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_early,_release_often

If cathedrals are going to continue to be the release strategy of the wxWidgets 
developers, MacPorts might be wise to try to prepare for similar situations in 
the future, by using numbered wxWidgets ports, and making them simultaneously 
installable, so that each port can declare a dependency on whichever version of 
wxWidgets it works with and it does not need to affect other ports.


Or, if there are no ports that require wxWidgets earlier than 2.9, or if they 
can be easily patched to support 2.9, then we could update the main wxWidgets 
port to the current 2.9 release and forget about 2.8 already.


Let's just do something that results in users on current OS X being able to 
install the ports they want without fuss.

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