Option to work locally without calls to github

[iagomosqueira]

we are using icesTAF to esnure a number of developers work on the same exact versions of packages. As we use different OSs, bootstrap/software is shared and updated every time a package changes, and then each of us calls taf.bootstrap to create bootstrap/library for our machine.

It would be useful to have an argument local=FALSE to taf.bootstrap so that no call to github is made even to check for new versions, and simply bootstrap/software is processed if it matches SOFTWARE.bib.

I will have a go myself, but would be good to get your opinion @colinpmillar and @arni-magnusson

[arni-magnusson]

Hi Iago, thanks for your insightful and good suggestions.

My understanding is that you and Colin worked together on commits 6062df3 and ff4651d, which is a good step to reduce the number of unnecessary GitHub connections.

What you're suggesting here in #37 could be called offline=FALSE to make the purpose even clearer? I imagine it would affect both SOFTWARE.bib and DATA.bib, and both GitHub handles and general URLs?

[iagomosqueira]

Thanks for the (too kind) response.

Yes, offline=FALSE would work just fine. Yes, should affect both but the main concern here is github, so thinking on SOFWARE.bib mostly.

[iagomosqueira]

Looking into implementing this I found about taf.install(). This I am using now to install packages in software and not in library from the tar,gz files without checking github. Or should taf.bootstrap(offline=TRUE) do something else for software?

[colinpmillar]

Hi both,
I think, maybe I am going on a tangent here, but i think what may solve this is if we push the tar.gz files to the GH repo, and then when running taf.bootstrap, we simply check that the commit refs match between the SOFTWARE.bib and the tar.gz and if they do we simply install from the tar.gz file
Is this on or off target?