FLAVORS

FLAVORS provide a way for ports to be compiled with different options under different circumstances.

One common use for FLAVORS is to provide support for different database mechanisms.  The mysql FLAVOR would be built with the 
--with-mysql configure option.  And the pgsql and sqlite flavors would have similar configure options.

Another way FLAVORS are useful is to limit a large number of dependencies when an option may not always be needed (like gtk flavors).