-data files

[Bruno Kleinert]

This one time, at band camp, Miriam Ruiz wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Reading the latest messages, I was wondering what might be the best way to
> handle -data files, especially big ones.
> 
> One point might be how not to pudate the data part of the package when it is
> not needed. For example, some of my games needed some bug correction in the
> code, but the data, even when it is repackaged again and assigned a new debian
> revision number, it's exactly the same. How could we avoid this?
> 
> Another question might be how to handle games with huge data files, like
> nexuiz. I was wondering whether some users could prefer not to really install
> the data into the computer, but to "play from the CD" (I mean regarding to
> animations, maps, graphics and so, not about the program itself or the
> configuration files). Is there a way to handle this?
> 
> Greetings,
> Miry
> 
> 
> 
> 		
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> 

there *might* be a way to handle this, if the game data is available in
smaller parts instead of one huge archive. 

regarding nexuiz it's very problematic as the whole game data is packed
in a single .pk3 file, which is in general a zip archive and the game
engine needs the data that way.

my first idea to handle that problem was to make a package that
downloads the game data from an upstream mirror, but as moritz
suggested that's quite annoying for users with low bandwidth internet
connections who install nexuiz-data from cd.

another suggestion is to create packages like nexuiz-data (containing
the data itself) and nexuiz-data-installer (downloading the game data
from upstream and installing it) and make nexuiz depend on 
nexuiz-data | nexuiz-data-installer - but i'm not sure if that's really
a good idea. not packaging nexuiz because of its size would be
disappointing, as this game shows that open source and fully gpl'ed
games can be of really good quality and CAN compete with commercial
games!

atm i can't think of "the right" solution for this...

-- 
Among elephants it's not considered cool nor in any good taste
to drain other elephants