This does bring up something that has been on the mind mind for a while: In FreeBSD there is a file called /etc/make.conf which stores the default versions in a shell variable,
For example the current settings for Python are # Python DEFAULT_VERSIONS+= python=3.12 python3=3.12 It sure would be great to have a file specifying the default versions of MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Perl, PHP, Python, etc Marius -- Marius Schamschula > On Jul 1, 2026, at 10:19 AM, Johan Kütt <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi! > > Slightly off topic, but related to Python and dependencies. Is there a way to > make a port depend on the latest stable version of Python? I’ve had many > cases where one piece of software ends up requiring 2 or 3 different Python > versions because the owners of its dependencies haven’t bothered to update > the hard coded Python versions in their portfiles. I understand that version > limiting may be required due to incompatibilities, but most of the time this > is not the case. > > Also when developing software, to upgrade Python I need to reinstall the > whole dependent library tree and make sure that everything I need has already > been updated for the new Python version. > > All the best, > > Johan > > >> On 1. Jul 2026, at 16:53, Joshua Root <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> On 1/7/2026 16:35, Vincent Habchi wrote: >>> If I understand the documentation correctly, using python.versions in non >>> py-* ports results in mostly nothing. Only python.default_version seems to >>> be honoured. >>> My question is: wouldn’t it be sensible to automatically create variants >>> based on python.versions (e.g python.versions 314 315 → +python314 >>> +python315 variants automatically generated), with a default version set to >>> whatever python.default_version binds to, so that the user would have a way >>> to control which python version every Python-dependent application member >>> of the Python portgroup uses, not just the py-* modules? >> Ideally ports that use python and aren't modules that will be imported by >> other python code should just use the current stable version. I'd like to >> avoid further scope creep in the python portgroup, and I've mentioned more >> than once in the past that it would be fine to add a new portgroup to create >> these variants for the ports that want it, but apparently so far nobody has >> found it worth the effort. That may be because it only ends up being around >> 10 lines of code. >> >> - Josh Marius -- Marius Schamschula
