package test data in an ilastik-tests package

[k-dominik]

Currently we use the conda build system to build the packages ilastik, ilastik-gpu, ilastik-core. All of these include the test data. Uncompressed our test ilastik folder looks like this:

 92M	tests/test_ilastik
 87M	tests/test_ilastik/data
4.1M	tests/test_ilastik/test_applets
792K	tests/test_ilastik/test_workflows
312K	tests/test_ilastik/widgets
...

clearly, the biggest part is is the data. For environments it gets included twice (ilastik, ilastik-gpu both depend on ilastik-core).

It is not possible to exclude from the conda package with simple means, see discussion here.

One of the suggestions is to build a dedicated package for the test data.

Pros:

• conda package will be much lighter - faster to download/install

Cons:

• might make development more awkward.
• probably a lot of work to adapt our tests to work from that. (We use relative paths from __file__ a lot)

[k-dominik]

I'm gonna 👍 myself, as I had this idea again and already wanted to open a new issue ;D

[k-dominik]

maybe pooch could be an option to manage these data (thx @FynnBe)

[FynnBe]

At danger of pointing out the obvious.... with pooch you wouldn't need a dedicated package. You could load the same collection from multiple projects/packages.

[k-dominik]

yeah thank you Fynn :) I guess the title here does not reflect the sentiment. In the end I want a slimmer ilastik package - dedicated test package was the idea of November...