port 1.300 dies because 'variant' isn't set

[yaseppochi (Stephen J. Turnbull)]

port -u -f upgrade gnome-applets dies as follows:

---> Uninstalling atk 1.10.3_0 ---> Packaging tgz archive for atk 1.10.3_0 ---> Installing atk 1.10.3_0 ---> Activating atk 1.10.3_0 ---> Cleaning atk can't read "variant": no such variable

while executing

"set oldvariant $variant"

(procedure "upgrade" line 198) invoked from within

"upgrade $d $i $variationslist $optionslist depscache"

(procedure "upgrade" line 148) invoked from within

"upgrade $d $i $variationslist $optionslist depscache"

(procedure "upgrade" line 148) invoked from within

"upgrade $d $i $variationslist $optionslist depscache"

(procedure "upgrade" line 148) invoked from within

"upgrade $d $i $variationslist $optionslist depscache"

(procedure "darwinports::upgrade" line 148) invoked from within

"darwinports::upgrade $portname "port:$portname" [array get variations] [array get options]"

("uplevel" body line 9) invoked from within

"uplevel 1 $block"

(procedure "foreachport" line 16) invoked from within

"foreachport $portlist {

# Merge global variations into the variations specified for this port foreach { variation value } [array get global_variat..."

(procedure "action_upgrade" line 3) invoked from within

"$action_proc $action $portlist [array get global_options]"

(procedure "process_cmd" line 49) invoked from within

"process_cmd $remaining_args"

invoked from within

"if { [llength $remaining_args] > 0 } {

# If there are remaining arguments, process those as a command

# Exit immediately, by default, unless we'r..."

(file "/opt/local/bin/port" line 2471)

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oops, trying to copy and paste the preceding text paralyzed my Terminal. So I can't even give a list of all the dependencies that did get built. I can say atk was successfully built once before in the same process(!), so it's probably not got anything to do with atk.