Another newbie porter questions

[Michael Voucko]

Hi,

a month ago I "finished" my first port, its intention is to add a little
convinience for me when installing a standard set of ports - similar to what
happens when using misc/instant-workstation.

After reading the Porter's handbook it wasn't to hard to put the stuff together
which is needed to install the ports I wanted. But still there were all these
options dialogs I tried to get around.
So I started to search the web and other ressources how to prevent the options
dialog to show up while still being able to preselect the options I wanted.
After reading "Lightweight FreeBSD package cluster in jail" from dinoex@ and
parts of the port framework's makefiles I tried to use a slave-port like so

<<<<<<
PKGCATEGORY?=   local
MASTERDIR=  /usr/ports/lang/php4-extensions

# get around options dialog
PACKAGE_BUILDING=   yes

# options to set for master port
WITHOUT_BCMATH= true
.
..
WITH_PCRE=  true
.
..
WITHOUT_ZLIB=   true

.include "${MASTERDIR}/Makefile"
 >>>>>>>

This worked fine for me until yesterday - while installing a new machine it
simply did not build my php4-extensions slave port instead make(1) just printed
"Variable WITHOUT is recursive" and exited. I tried to get more information
using the '-v', '-d m' and '-p 2' and alike as suggested in "PMake - a
tutorial" but to no avail.
Can please someone point me to the right direction/ressource/link to better
understand what happens?

I found quite some dicussions on freebsd-ports@ about PACKAGE_BUILDING, how to
handle OPTIONS and alike. My current understanding is, that there are a few
ways to cope with sets of preselected options but not a consistent way for all
ports, is that correct?

Thanks,
   Michael