DEPENDS -- is it time to remove it?

[Paul Schenkeveld]

On Fri, Jan 05, 2007 at 08:28:10PM +0000, RW wrote:
> On Fri, 5 Jan 2007 20:52:50 +0300
> "Andrew Pantyukhin" <infofarmer at FreeBSD.org> wrote:
> 
> > On 1/5/07, RW <fbsd06 at mlists.homeunix.com> wrote:
> > > Isn't DEPENDS still a sensible way of making
> > > one metaport depend on another. For example
> > > if someone wanted to create a personal desk-
> > > top metaport that depends on KDE, xorg etc.
> > 
> > People need programs, not ports. 
> 
> It's not that straightforward when you want to depend on a
> metaport like KDE. All of the binaries can be provided by individual
> sub-ports. The sensible thing to do is create a dependency on KDE and
> let KDE's options/knobs handle the lower dependencies. The ports tree
> doesn't need to have metaports depend on metaports, but some people
> find it useful to create their own. 
> 
> >It's more
> > sensible to run_depend on files than just on
> > ports.
> 
> Looking at the porter's handbook it looks like the solution is to use
> RUN_DEPENDS with${NONEXISTENT}, so I guess DEPENDS is redundant.

So now I have a need for a metaport to depend on another metaport.
Without DEPENDS, how do I accomplish that.  Using RUN_DEPENDS with 
${NONEXISTENT} seems not appropriate here, the Porters Handbook says
that this should only be used to pull in source, not to install another
metaport (unless it is already installed) and the effect of using
something like RUN_DEPENDS=${NONEXISTENT}:${PORTSDIR}/lang/php5-extensions
causes make install to try installing php5-extensions even when this port
is already installed.

The two metaport I need to depend on are php5-extensions and
xorg-drivers and I really don't want to copy the OPTIONS processing of
these ports and maintain that in the future.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Paul Schenkeveld