astropy / astropy/astroquery

ENH: Option to not add 'mastDownload' to download_path in Observations.download_products

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mast
Dominant language
Python
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Description

It's great that since #1150 it's possible to download data to a custom directory. However, `'mastDownload'` is always appended to the download path even if it isn't the current directory.

It would be nice if there was an option to not do this to keep an existing directory structure cleaner. I was thinking about implementing this myself but it's hard to ensure a good default backwards compatible behavior since the default would change depending the value of the `flat` flag.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

Inspect Observations.download_products and its handling of flat and custom paths first. Confirm the intended option and backward-compatible defaults for both flat values; done means callers can keep or omit the mastDownload directory without an unintended change to existing behavior.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
python
Domain
data
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
38/100

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