I've finally finished cleaning the DEPENDS lines to a state I like.
A new feature was introduced, but it's rather esoteric, and VERY special case,
so I'd advise against using it for very good reasons, it's a new ports variable
called PKGSPEC.
Here is what happened before PKGSPEC:
------------------------------------
When you write a dependency line such as:
BUILD_DEPENDS = devel/bison
there is just a directory name, no pkgspec part, so the pkgspec part is
automatically generated.
Up until a week ago, it was ALWAYS stem-*, e.g., the above was equivalent to
BUILD_DEPENDS = bison-*:devel/bison
This is almost always appropriate, and there is very little case for changing
it for almost any port.
HOWEVER, a few ports can coexist as various versions. For instance, you can
install autoconf-2.13 alongside autoconf-2.59.
So, what do you do when you need a given autoconf version ?
Turns out the following would be incorrect:
BUILD_DEPENDS = devel/autoconf/2.59
if no autoconf is installed, then this would install autoconf-2.59.
However, this is really
BUILD_DEPENDS = autoconf-*:devel/autoconf/2.59
any autoconf would do. So if autoconf-2.13 was already there, then the
port would happily continue building, and usually fail in atrocious ways.
-------------------------
PKGSPEC is something I can now put in the autoconf/2.59 port proper,
I would write
PKGSPEC = autoconf-2.59
and suddenly, my BUILD_DEPENDS becomes correct:
BUILD_DEPENDS = devel/autoconf/2.59
will be enough to only match autoconf-2.59.
This is very powerful: I can now tweak all default dependencies on a port
by just adding a line to that port. This is also quite dangerous and
very sneaky: when you see a DEPEND like the following, you have no obvious
way of knowing whether it's autoconf-* or autoconf-2.59.
(okay, if you build it, you'll find out soon enough).
So it should be used very seldom. For the few cases that require it, though,
it simplifies things a great deal.
I did "fix things" ...
