extensions: allow multiple "extends" directives (#28853)

* extensions: allow multiple "extends" directives

This will allow multiple extends directives in a package as long as only one of
them is selected as a dependency in the concrete spec.

* document the option to have multiple extends

2 files changed, 28 insertions, 5 deletions

diff --git a/lib/spack/docs/packaging_guide.rst b/lib/spack/docs/packaging_guide.rst
index 293e83a118..bdf557a346 100644
--- a/lib/spack/docs/packaging_guide.rst
+++ b/lib/spack/docs/packaging_guide.rst
@@ -2470,6 +2470,24 @@ Now, the ``py-numpy`` package can be used as an argument to ``spack
 activate``.  When it is activated, all the files in its prefix will be
 symbolically linked into the prefix of the python package.
 
+A package can only extend one other package at a time.  To support packages
+that may extend one of a list of other packages, Spack supports multiple
+``extends`` directives as long as at most one of them is selected as
+a dependency during concretization.  For example, a lua package could extend
+either lua or luajit, but not both:
+
+.. code-block:: python
+
+   class LuaLpeg(Package):
+       ...
+       variant('use_lua', default=True)
+       extends('lua', when='+use_lua')
+       extends('lua-luajit', when='~use_lua')
+       ...
+
+Now, a user can install, and activate, the ``lua-lpeg`` package for either
+lua or luajit.
+
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 Adding additional constraints
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
diff --git a/lib/spack/spack/package.py b/lib/spack/spack/package.py
index d3e1bdc002..447e7a9d46 100644
--- a/lib/spack/spack/package.py
+++ b/lib/spack/spack/package.py
@@ -1186,22 +1186,27 @@ class PackageBase(six.with_metaclass(PackageMeta, PackageViewMixin, object)):
         if not self.extendees:
             return None
 
-        # TODO: allow more than one extendee.
-        name = next(iter(self.extendees))
+        deps = []
 
         # If the extendee is in the spec's deps already, return that.
         for dep in self.spec.traverse(deptypes=('link', 'run')):
-            if name == dep.name:
-                return dep
+            if dep.name in self.extendees:
+                deps.append(dep)
+
+        # TODO: allow more than one active extendee.
+        if deps:
+            assert len(deps) == 1
+            return deps[0]
 
         # if the spec is concrete already, then it extends something
         # that is an *optional* dependency, and the dep isn't there.
         if self.spec._concrete:
             return None
         else:
+            # TODO: do something sane here with more than one extendee
             # If it's not concrete, then return the spec from the
             # extends() directive since that is all we know so far.
-            spec, kwargs = self.extendees[name]
+            spec, kwargs = next(iter(self.extendees.items()))
             return spec
 
     @property