Thank you for the explanation.
Perhaps this is a question better suited to the development mailing list, but
why doesn’t the `universal` variant (which exists) achieve the same goal as the
`mirror_i386` variant?
-Marcus
> On Dec 29, 2022, at 7:43 PM, Joshua Root <j...@macports.org> wrote:
>
> On 2022-12-30 04:58 , mcalh...@macports.org wrote:
>> Please forgive my ignorance, but I am not sure how `variant mirror_i386`
>> works.
>> It exists but is *not* default, so how would it be set by the mirroring
>> mechanish?
>> If it is not set, how will `if {[variant_exists mirror_i386] &&
>> [variant_isset mirror_i386]} {` ever run?
>
> It's a hack for sure. The mirroring script mirrors ports with each of their
> variants set, so that files only used by certain variants will be mirrored.
> In this case, the files are (on i386) also used for reasons other than the
> variant being set, so end users don't have to actually use the variant to
> benefit from its files being mirrored.
>
> - Josh
