[question] Is it a good idea to make several port of a library because vcpkg's features cannot be used as alternatives?

[eao197]

Hi! I'm a maintainer of RESTinio library. And RESTinio can be used with standalone version of Asio or with Boost.Asio. But these options are exclusive: either standalone Asio or Boost.Asio can be selected.

The port file for RESTinio supports only standaline Asio currently. If a user wants to use Boost.Asio then he/she has to make an overlay.

I don't think it's an easy way to go, expecially for ordinary users who are not expert in CMake/vcpkg. It will be good to allow a user to write something like this in the vcpkg.json manifest:

{
    "$schema": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/microsoft/vcpkg-tool/main/docs/vcpkg.schema.json",
    "name": "versions-test",
    "version": "1.0.0",
    "builtin-baseline": "64ca152891d6ab135c6c27881e7eb0ac2fa15bba",
    "dependencies": [
        {
            "name": "restinio",
            "features" : [ "boost-asio" ]
        },
        "json-dto",
        "sqlitecpp"
    ]
}

and do nothing more than that.

I've tried to do exactly that, but vcpkg's features cannot be used for implementation of alternatives.

So I wonder how to provide a user an easy way to select standalone or Boost's Asio. And the only idea I have at the moment is to create another port, like "restinio-boost-asio". Such a port will allow to write:

{
    "$schema": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/microsoft/vcpkg-tool/main/docs/vcpkg.schema.json",
    "name": "versions-test",
    "version": "1.0.0",
    "builtin-baseline": "64ca152891d6ab135c6c27881e7eb0ac2fa15bba",
    "dependencies": [
        "restinio-boost-asio",
        "json-dto",
        "sqlitecpp"
    ]
}

and nothing more.

But I'm in doubt is it a good idea to have two almost the same ports?