On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 6:05 PM, Greg Von Kuster <greg@bx.psu.edu> wrote:
Currently I feel that a tool dependency definition should allow for only a singe download of some item, and if that item requires other items. they should be defined as separate dependencies that are installed using the prior_installation_required=True attribute.
That seems too idealised: Not every tool is bundled up nicely for a clean install, often there are bits and pieces which must be fetched individually. In some cases this is a judgement call about when this should be a separate dependency.
Is there a case where this is not possible? If so, I'm willing to enable downloading more than 1 item per dependency package definition, but I think we have to be careful in how we go about this.
Yes, effectiveT3 comes as four JAR files - the core tool and three models: http://testtoolshed.g2.bx.psu.edu/view/peterjc/effectivet3 This is an example of a fairly common pattern where there is a core tool, plus one or more essential data files to be downloaded individually.
In any case, wget should not be used yet as it requires wget to be on the installation server, and we have not yet decided what 3rd party utilities we can assume exist in that environment.
If there is justification for allowing download_by_url multiple times in the same package dependency definition, then I would rather enhance the tool shed framework to support that.
If you won't want us to use wget, then we will likely also need a download_by_url variant which DOES NOT decompress anything. I'm thinking of compressed data files which should stay compressed. Regards, Peter