> Should I expect a +quartz variant to propagate to dependencies, and > overrule existing variants?
propagate to dependencies? Yes. You demonstrated that already when you tried to install gimp +quartz and it passed that down to deps. overrule existing variants? No. If you already have a port installed with a certain variant, and then you try to install that port again with a conflicting variant (especially automatically), MacPorts doesn’t know what you really want to do exactly. So it asks you to deactivate or uninstall the one you have installed first, rather than doing it automatically for you. Design choice, most would support, not everyone. You can find the ports you have installed as x11 pretty easily (port -v installed | grep x11) and deactivate them, or just deactivate all your ports if you prefer and then install gimp +quartz and away you go. You can add +quartz to “variants.conf” to make that a global default even if you forget setting if you like. HTH, K
