Re: libcifpp

[Andrius Merkys <merkys@debian.org>]

Hi Maarten,

On 2021-09-29 18:03, Maarten L. Hekkelman wrote:
> I just committed my changes to salsa, however, this is not building yet.
> 
> Problem is, the current build process tries to download a huge CCD file
> (components.cif) and this somehow fails since in the debian package
> building environment the directories are perhaps mapped differently.

Indeed, you cannot download anything during the build.

> Anyway, question is if this file should be downloaded at all. The
> package now comes with a separate libcifpp-data package containing the
> script to update this and other data files.
> 
> Should I add a call to this update script in the post install hook?
> Having 500MB of data in Debian that's probably updated the very next day
> after installation seems very inconvenient, right?

I like the current approach of libcifpp for skipping a cached copy of
mmcif_*.dic.gz in the binary package and setting a cron job to update
_if only_ the user wishes to receive the updates. This way at least some
version of mmcif_*.dic.gz will be found in a standard location on the
system.

However, I understand that for components.cif this is different due to
the sheer size of this file. I think that not shipping components.cif in
a binary package and downloading it in postinst is a viable solution.
But I would rely on the choice the user makes during the package
configuration (as is done now for mmcif_pdbx_v50.dic). A default option
would be "No" for non-interactive installs.

OpenStructure depends on components.cif, and I will make its postinst
emit a red warning if components.cif is not downloaded by libcifpp-data:

  No components.cif found. Please configure libcifpp-data to download
  this file. Otherwise some functions may not work.

Does this make sense?

Best,
Andrius