NetLogo / NetLogo/NetLogo-Libraries

How to handle large zip files (100mb+)

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#56 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Dominant language
Scala
Stars
20
Forks
32
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Description

With recent updates to the Vid extension, the zip file size is over the 100mb limit for GitHub. GitHub advises using the git-lfs extension for this situation, which is an option for us. But I hesitated because it means anyone using or trying to contribute to this repository would have to also install that extension for their git client. For the Vid extension I decided just to put the zip file on our ccl-artifacts S3 bucket to avoid making a decision on this issue for now. Large extensions are pretty rare, as evidenced by the fact that this never came up before.

I see two options:

  1. Enable git-lfs and update instructions to include installing/using it. We should also test that the download links remain the same and are still usable by the extensions manager from NetLogo. This might be coupled with updated instructions for submitting extensions through the GitHub UI.
  2. Update the instructions to indicate files over 100mb must be uploaded elsewhere and a link provided with the pull request so we can download it and place it in our AWS bucket.

I should point out that using git-lfs might provide better performance for this repo in any case, as we do have many larger zip/binary files stored which is the use case for that extension, although none are over the size limit.

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reviewing the repository's existing extension-submission instructions and the Git LFS and GitHub guidance linked in the issue. Compare Git LFS with the S3-upload approach, including whether extension-manager download links remain usable. Done means choosing a policy, documenting the required contributor workflow, and testing the resulting download path.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
aws, git
Domain
cloud, devops, documentation
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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