Package with *many* source files, Stepmix songs for Stepmania

Fractal · 2010-05-17 08:15:04

Hi, I would like to create a package for the Stepmix songs for Stepmania (http://www.stepmania.com/wiki/Download_StepMix_1_Songs and 6 other pages).
The problem is that there are many songs (about 500) and that there is no way to download them all at once.
I can see three solutions to this problem :
- Write a PKGBUILD with all the songs as source files, but the AUR page (and the PKGBUILD) will look terrifying and I'm not even sure that the website and/or makepkg accept PKGBUILDs with hundreds of source files
- Write an ugly script in the PKGBUILD grep'ing the Downloads pages to find every link which look like a download link and download them
- Write this ugly script only once to make a tgz containing all the songs, then store this on my website and tell the PKGBUILD to fetch the songs from here, but I'm not sure that the licence of the songs allow me to do that (a priori the copyright holders have only allowed to distribute the songs on the Stepmania website)

What do you think?

Fractal

tomk · 2010-05-17 09:44:48

I don't want to dull your enthusiasm, but do you think an Arch package is appropriate here? IME users almost invariably place media files either under their $HOME or on a network share under their ownership - pacman operates as root only, and is therefore the wrong tool for handling user-owned data.

Also, I'll admit I know nothing at all about stepmania, but wouldn't users pick a selection of the 500 songs - or would they really want them all?

Fractal · 2010-05-17 10:11:59

Stepmania is a rythm game where you have to step on arrows in rythm with the music. To be able to play you must have songs : audio files *and* appropriate simfiles describing the arrows in sync with the music (and those files must be placed in /opt/stepmania or Stepmania will not see them).
The problem is that Stepmania doesn't include songs, once Stepmania is installed you cannot play because you still have to find songs and this is not that easy to find cool songs to play with.
That's why I think it would be very convenient to have an AUR package downloading some songs.
And yes, there are songs better than the others, but this is difficult to know which are better without trying them, so I guess that most users will want to have them all.

Fractal

tomk · 2010-05-17 14:39:23

Thanks for the explanation - I'll leave you to get on with it.

Arch Linux

#1 2010-05-17 08:15:04