[Users] ExternalLibraries without tarballs

[Erik Schnetter]

ExternalLibraries thorns containing tarballs can be very large, in particular if the history of the thorn grows and contains multiple tarballs.

I have just tested storing the source tree instead of the tarball in ExternalLibraries/Boost. This seems to work surprisingly well. For example, boost_1_54_0.tar.gz (the current version) has 66 MByte, while a git repository containing the last five versions of Boost as uncompressed source trees has 75 MByte. Clearly, this is very good.

Other advantages of storing source trees are:
- this is what we do for every thorn, so why not for ExternalLibraries (d'oh)
- one can easily look at the source code of an external library
- no need to untar and later delete the source tree while building
- no need to apply patches -- the changes can be made directly in the source tree

In my opinion, this is the way to go. I am currently setting up a new repository of ExternalLibraries/Boost in this way. (Obviously, it is not possible to keep the current repository, since its history is already at 406 MB.)

-erik

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Erik Schnetter <schnetter at cct.lsu.edu>
http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/personal/eschnetter/

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