I don't think implementation difficulty is the barrier here - but that all variants should just have the same behavior.
In my mind, the real problem is the need for +test variants, there should be a way to just use the test phase - and perhaps changes to base/ to enable that are a better option. > On Oct 23, 2022, at 7:58 PM, Jason Liu <jason...@umich.edu> wrote: > > My own personal opinion has been that +test/+tests and +debug, by default, > should not propagate through the chain of dependencies; and then perhaps > there might be some way to enable propagation (maybe with a command line > option?). > > However, if I recall correctly, all variants propagate through the dependency > chain, so it might be difficult to make certain variant keywords behave > differently? > > -- > Jason Liu > > > On Sun, Oct 23, 2022 at 1:58 PM Ken Cunningham > <ken.cunningham.web...@gmail.com> wrote: > Various ports implement a “test” or “tests” variant to allow extra features > and deps required for testing to be enabled. > > This variant, when requested, will propagate up the chain to all the ports, > however. There is no real use case where someone would desire the test/s > variant to propagate up. > > This generates needless builds, and often enables features people neither > need nor want, and then guarantees manual rebuilds, forever, of the involved > ports. > > I recently came back to a massive building project involving clang and llvm > when I was trying to build “mesa +tests”. Because clang-15 and llvm-15 also > have a “+tests” variant, and had not yet been installed, port was building > those (and possibly others) with the tests variant rather than use the > prebuilt binary. > > Of course I just aborted the huge llvm/clang-15 build, cleaned them up, and > installed them separately. But others would probably not know to do this. > > I had suggested a few years ago we might namespace the test/tests variants, > by having a convention that the portname be prepended to the test variant, to > be more specific and avoid this — but not a widely acceptable idea at that > time. So we’re still in the same situation… > > Is it possible that a “test” or “tests” variant might not be propagated up > the ports chain by base, instead? > > > K > > > > PS. A similar thing happens with “+debug” variants, another common variant > that you *usually* don’t want propagated up to *every single port* in the > chain either. > > This one is occasionally something that people would want up their chain, but > it is so fragile of a plan to rely on variant propagation (ie if you have the > port installed already, it won’t be reinstalled with the “+debug” variant), > that such rare users might best install each port they want to be installed > as “debug” do that specifically. Certainly most of us don’t want clang-15 > installed with it’s debug variant when you’re trying to debug some little > port. -- Daniel J. Luke
