I have written a little graphics library for my students and C++. Since Apple has removed the Carbon interface, I am trying to revive its Mac implementation using SDL. So far so good, until I wanted to implement the use of images. I installed libsdl2_image, and it installed an absolute PIGLOAD of dependencies, among them perl and two versions of Python! Took numerous minutes to install. And to make matters worse, a note printed at the end that some of the dependencies installed are under GPL. I can't live with that.
Question #1: is there any command in Macports that will completely undo the last install, with all dependencies installed at that time?
Question #2: I'm trying to understand variants, because it looks like this is something that I need.
% port variants libsdl2_image
libsdl2_image has the variants:
jxl: Enable JPEG XL support (experimental)
universal: Build for multiple architectures
However, its own message concerning GPL dependencies states:
To include all nonfree, GPLed and LGPL code use variant +nonfree.
To remove nonfree and GPLed code leaving only LGPL code remove the +gpl2
variant.
So it would seem that variants exist that are recognized but not listed by the port variants command. How deep does this go? How many others might there be? Obviously, this massive install happened because the package is supporting every conceivable format of image. But really I would be satisfied with png (jpeg would be nice), a small subset of that. If I could find a variant that would come close to doing what I want, and get rid of a lot of those other dependencies, I sure would like to use it.
Question #3: After the fact, will this command delete any of those GPL-based dependencies that were brought in by mistake? I want them GONE from my system.
sudo port install libsdl2_image -gpl2 -nonfree