autodetecting dependencies

[Eitan Adler]

On 9 April 2012 22:02, Stephen Montgomery-Smith <stephen at missouri.edu> wrote:
> So suppose we are building port A.  It turns out that the configure in port
> A autodetects whether package B is present or not.  It will build either
> way.  But if built with package B, it will not operate without it.
>
> So suppose I build port A on machine X which has package B installed. Then I
> create a package from A, and copy the package to machine Y. Machine Y does
> not have package B installed, and so when package A is installed, it doesn't
> work on machine Y.
>
> What are the accepted ways of handling this?
>
> 1.  Don't worry about it.  tinderbox builds will never build port A in the
> presence of package B.
>
> 2.  Have the Makefile of port A detect whether package B is installed, and
> if it is then add B as a dependency of A.
>
> 3.  Cripple the configure in port A so that it doesn't autodetect for
> package B.  (Sometimes this can be done using a suitable CONFIGURE_ARGS, but
> not in my particular situation.)

The current answer for "automagical dependencies" is to fix (not
cripple) the configure option to not autodetect for package B. Any
port which currently has automatic detection is buggy and should be
fixed. You can use the OPTIONS framework to enable or disable the
option.

-- 
Eitan Adler