[MonoDevelop] Tarball and binary files

[Timotheus Pokorra]

Hello,

this is about the nuget package binaries that are being downloaded
during make, in master [1].
The difference is, that this happens now during make, while in
MonoDevelop 5.0.1 the dlls where already committed to git: [2]

I provided a pull request [3], which downloads the asp.net dlls from
nuget during make dist, and would include the binaries in the tarball.

Now Lluis and myself are wondering, if it is unusual to include binary
files in the tarball.

The options are:
a) include binaries in the tarball (current behaviour)
There are currently already many binaries included in the tarball:
I downloaded the latest official tarball from [4], and did:
 tar xjf monodevelop-5.0.1-0.tar.bz2
 cd monodevelop-5.0.1
 find . -name *.dll | wc -l
which tells that there are 128 dlls already part of the tarball.
There are also 44 *.exe files.

b) let make download external binaries during the build of the package
I wonder if tarballs should be complete, and not require further
download from the internet, so that builds are reproducible.
On the openSUSE Build Service, you don't have a connection to the
outside world during the build of the package, so that the builds are
reproducible.

c) include all sources in the tarball
I guess this could be done with git submodules etc, like it is done
already in [5], eg Newtonsoft.Json

The question is: do people think we should provide the full sources
for everything in the tarball?
Or should we continue to allow binary files in the tarball?

All the best,
  Timotheus

[1]: https://github.com/mono/monodevelop/blob/master/main/src/addins/AspNet/MonoDevelop.AspNet.csproj#L494
[2]: https://github.com/mono/monodevelop/tree/monodevelop-5.0.1-branch/main/src/addins/AspNet/MonoDevelop.AspNet.Mvc/lib
[3]: https://github.com/mono/monodevelop/pull/615
[4]: http://download.mono-project.com/sources/monodevelop/monodevelop-5.0.1-0.tar.bz2
[5]: https://github.com/mono/monodevelop/tree/monodevelop-5.0.1-branch/main/external