port variants

[Chris Inacio]

On Apr 13, 2012, at 3:39 PM, Freddie Cash <fjwcash at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 13, 2012 at 12:04 PM, Chris Inacio <nacho319 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I was recently asked to do some FreeBSD ports support work.  I mostly use a
>> Mac and the MacPorts system.  MacPorts has the concept of a variant for a
>> port, but I can't find the analogue in the FreeBSD system.
>> 
>> Does the FreeBSD ports system have the concept of a variant?  If so, can
>> someone point me in the right direction on how to create one?
> 
> Describing what a "variant" is, how it works in MacPorts, and what you
> are trying to do would help a lot.  :)
> 
> The closest guess I could make would be "slave port", but I don't
> think that works the same way.
> 
Sorry, you're right. 

For example, a port of say Emacs could have a variant of X11. 

So Emacs or Emacs+X11. 

The X11 variant would (somewhat obviously) include building regular Emacs but also the X11 toolbar etc. while Emacs wouldn't include any X11 features (& dependencies). 

On the Mac, we can build universal binaries (PowerPC, ia32, and x86_64), at the cost of disk space. So we can build almost any package with the +universal variant. 

Is that a reasonable explanation?

Chris




> -- 
> Freddie Cash
> fjwcash at gmail.com