Packaging data files alternatives

[Emmanuel Kasper]

> Separately, I once had a dislike of packages (like flashplugin-nonfree) which
> don't actually contain the program they purport to package, but download bits
> of it from the net in postinst.  I wrote doom-package to try and encapsulate my
> opinion on the best way to handle this (largely based on the way 'java-package'
> worked at the time); doom-package became game-package and later
> game-data-packager.  
> 
Hello Team

I hijack this thread because I have a related question. I am somehow
working on a package  gnome-video-arcade ( something like a games
catalog browser ) which is greatly enhanced by using extra catalog data
files.

I tried with my sponsor to get the three catalog data files under a free
license but some developpers refused to put a license on the file (
although it's free to download )

Now I was wondering how to get this files to get these files for
gnome-video-arcade properly.

Up to now I see four solutions:

1. write a downloader script to get this files, package the downloader
script.  The script download the data files in
/usr/local/share/gva-data-whatever by default ,which is the path
gnome-video-arcade would look for them.
		( As an alternative the downloader script could be distributed with
gnome-video-arcade )

Like you Jon I am skeptical of postint downloading abuse which I found
fragile, especially since these data files are often updated ( every
threee month ) So the script would have to be run manually by the user.

2. write something like googleearth-package which downloads the files,
and create a debian package of the data files.

3. use game-data-packager but IHMO it is not appropriate here since the
downloading and unziping of the three ressource files from three
different URL is the biggest burden.

4. package these data files, and distribute them outside the debian
repositories ( debian-maintainers.org anyone ? ) This is what the Fedora
maintainer for gnome-video-arcade is doing.

I have a preference for solution 1.
but I would like to hear advices as I am new in this packaging game (team )

Manu