On Sep 15, 2019, at 22:31, Eric F (iEFdev) wrote:
> What would be better (ie good “portiqette”)… Adding subports (keeping the
> variants), or replacing variants with subports?
Provide only one way for a user to install a feature. Convert variants to
subports, if appropriate.
Usually if a variant changes names we keep a compatibility variant around for a
time. For example, if a port provided a variant X which a user may have
installed, and then we change the variant name to Y, we keep a variant X that's
marked as requiring variant Y. When the user upgrades their installation, they
will automatically get the new variant Y (and the old variant X which now does
nothing). After a sufficient period of time to allow all users to have upgraded
(we usually recommend one year), the old variant X can be removed.
Converting variants to subports may or may not allow that same easy upgrade
path to take place. For example, if the new subport has a dependency on the
main port, you cannot make the old variant depend on the new subport, because
that would introduce a circular dependency. One possibility in that case is to
leave a compatibility variant for a time that does nothing but print an error
message telling the user to install the subport.
