hdf5: either make +fortran a default or make it a standalone port?

[barracuda156]

I wanna make a port for h5fortran, and it requires HDF5 to be installed with Fortran support. It is not optional.

--->  Extracting h5fortran-22273ef9886e35af5b7bf1c59fca92b791da5989.tar.gz
Executing:  cd "/opt/local/var/macports/build/_opt_PPCSnowLeopardPorts_fortran_h5fortran/h5fortran/work" && /usr/bin/gzip -dc '/opt/local/var/macports/distfiles/h5fortran/h5fortran-22273ef9886e35af5b7bf1c59fca92b791da5989.tar.gz' | /usr/bin/gnutar --no-same-owner -xf - 
--->  Configuring h5fortran
Error: Failed to configure h5fortran: hdf5 must be installed with +fortran+szip.
Error: See /opt/local/var/macports/logs/_opt_PPCSnowLeopardPorts_fortran_h5fortran/h5fortran/main.log for details.

Using active_variants solves the problem on a user level, but will not let CI pass: it will just fail, since the needed variant is not default. Could we solve this problem somehow?

[Dave-Allured (Dave Allured)]

It would be logical to have separate ports for separate major components of HDF5, such as the core C API, and the fortran API. This would improve dependency management. I filed a request upstream for this capability in the build system.
​https://github.com/HDFGroup/hdf5/issues/3221

[Dave-Allured (Dave Allured)]

The current HDF5 build system supports building the core C API without components. However, it does not support building any of the wrapper API's as stand-alone. I can think of several ways to do this for MacPorts.

1. Wait for upstream to add component capability to their build system. It looks like this might take a while.

2. Patch the current HDF5 build system to enable building, for example, the fortran API on top of a previous core C API build. The configuration dependency issues may be complicated.

3. Following a previous HDF5 core C API build, make another build for core plus fortran, for example. Then install only the fortran libs and include files; in effect throwing away the files from the second HDF5 core build. This may be easier than (2).

[barracuda156]

Replying to Dave-Allured:

It would be logical to have separate ports for separate major components of HDF5, such as the core C API, and the fortran API. This would improve dependency management. I filed a request upstream for this capability in the build system.
​https://github.com/HDFGroup/hdf5/issues/3221

Thank you very much for following on this.

As for preferred option, anything will do as long as we get an ability to depend on HDF5 with fortran (and szip) enabled.

[Eric A. Borisch <eborisch@…>]

In 8ea0aa3e341aed47189fb547bca39b0431033b15/macports-ports (master):

hdf5: Default to +fortran (​https://github.com/macports/macports-ports/pull/19409)

Closes #67273