There was a time when the only version of gcc that built on arm64 was gcc-devel/libgcc-devel. So ports put a specific dependency on that on arm. This was a long time ago now. It got things built.
Then various gcc versions came out, gcc-12, gcc-13 that would build on arm64 (with extra patches, but would build). So the dependency on gcc-devel/libgcc-devel was removed. But there are situations where if you had already installed some ports, you were stuck in the gcc-devel loop due to recorded variant history. Or if you had gcc-devel installed / libgcc-devel, it just kept on getting updated. None of this is ideal... It was just "expedient" as a Way To Get Things Done when things are imperfect. Same thing happens with perl and python and other supporting ports. MacPorts has been trying to purge all this kind of stuff out of the ports tree -- but it's hard, and complicated, and there is still lots and lots of it in there. Josh has made specific changes to try to reduce this recorded clutter. What I do is keep track of the ports I actually want installed by using "requested". Then every so often I delete all my ports, and reinstall them all freshly (not using the restore script, as that records the old variants I'm trying to get rid of) to pick up all the new defaults that have crept in over the period of time since I did it last. By doing that, you get all the new perl versions, python versions, gcc versions, etc. Ken
