how to deal with large data files

[Joshua Root]

On 2019-3-28 17:05 , Mojca Miklavec wrote:
> On Thu, 28 Mar 2019 at 05:12, Joshua Root wrote:
>> On 2019-3-28 10:17 , Renee Otten wrote:
>>> I am looking for some advice on how to deal with a port that will only
>>> download a large data set (~5GB),
>>> see https://github.com/macports/macports-ports/pull/3904. I assume we do
>>> not necessarily want to have that stored on the MacPorts distfile
>>> mirrors… correct? One way to accomplish this, I think, is to make it
>>> non-distributable, even though the license would allow so. Is there a
>>> preferred way of doing this or are there no concerns with a port like this?
>>
>> Does this single data file need to be managed by MacPorts at all? Adding
>> a note telling users where to download it from and where to put it might
>> be fine.
> 
> I have a port [gate] (with Qt GUI) which requires a port [geant4]
> which requires a port [geant4-data] which requires fetching 10+ data
> files with total size of somewhere around 0,6 - 1 GB (I would need to
> double-check the exact size). And that package doesn't even build
> anything, it just fetches and copies the data (and then ends up as a
> huge "package" in $prefix/var/software).
> 
> Manually fetching those 10+ files to satisfy a deep dependency sounds
> super tedious to me ...

In this case it's only one file, not 10+, and it's not a deep
dependency, it's data used directly by the GMTSAR application that the
PR is adding.

- Josh