Multiple distfiles vs "git submodule"

[Joshua Root]

On 2020-7-18 10:52 , Jason Liu wrote:
> If by "official release tarball" you are referring to what is in the
> blender/blender <https://github.com/blender/blender> GitHub repo, that
> tarball is incomplete. It doesn't contain the other 3 parts.
> 
> If instead you are referring to the tarball that is provided at
> https://www.blender.org/download/, then yes, that tarball is complete,
> in that it contains everything that comes from the split-up parts in
> GitHub. However, that tarball is located at a very non-standard
> location, and it's been pretty strongly recommended that I try not to
> deviate too far from what the vast majority of other ports are doing
> (i.e. downloading sources from GitHub). Basically, I didn't want to draw
> any ire from the veteran devs. If you're willing to back me up on a
> decision to go with the single tarball from blender.org
> <http://blender.org>'s download webpage, I'd be more than happy to go
> that route as well.

There is no problem whatsoever with downloading a project's official
release tarball from wherever they host it. If a lot of ports download
from GitHub, that's just because a lot of projects make their releases
available there.

It's actually preferable not to rely on GitHub's auto-generated tarballs
if possible. Some projects upload their proper release tarballs to
GitHub, but this one doesn't.

- Josh