Re: [bug-gsrc] No access to source files (firewalled)

[Brandon Invergo]

> One of the original conceptions for gsrc was to have one huge tarball
> with all current sources that could be downloaded.  Perhaps that idea
> could be revived now that there's been a request for it :).  Brandon, wdyt?

Well, I had previously tossed around the idea of doing two separate
releases, one with and one without the tarballs. I'm not against it and
I can see the use-case for it. It might grow to be unreasonably large
though. If I'm serious about including all GNOME packages (admittedly
not a priority at the moment), GSRC would eventually have over a
thousand packages. Granted, most packages would be small...

Another option that I was thinking about yesterday would be to have a
user customizable variable similar to Automake's EXTRA_DIST, let's call
it MY_DIST, which would allow the user to select a list of packages to
be cached with a `make my-dist' call. Then they can easily distribute a
tarball of it or put it on some external media to bring from computer to
computer as in this case. I assume no one will need *all* the code, so
this might be a compromise.

Anyway, out of sheer curiosity, when I get home this evening I'll try
to see how big a complete GSRC tarball would be right now. I'll report
my findings. I'm concerned that it might be too big for the user to
distribute himself conveniently (let's say 4gb is an arbitrary limit). 

-brandon