Git LFS Support

[BenjamenMeyer]

We have a lot of large files that we'd like to make available. Presently only a few members (@Loki1950 ) have access to some of these raw files used to build the files in the repository. The biggest issue is that these are files best served by git lfs; however, the pricing of using git lfs isn't too advantageous for us at the present time ($5/month for 50GB storage and 50GB throughput; we might fit in the storage but could easily be hit by the throughput).

Unfortunately, Git LFS doesn't make it easy to use alternative stores, requiring that users use an LFS proxy service to host in other systems.

1. We have a Digital Ocean account where we can setup storage at an affordable price:

• we can use Digital Ocean Spaces - an AWS S3 compatible service - with a proxy
• we can run our own git lfs server or simply host our a git repository for it. (see https://github.com/git-lfs/git-lfs/wiki/Implementations for options)

2. We can document for users how to setup.

One big concern is that hosting something this way will effectively limit access to it to those we give access to unless we can setup a GitHub SSO Federation so GH creds will work.

This is going to take some research to get setup properly.

Concerns:

• cost: we don't have much budget; storage and bandwidth)
• access: we're an open source projects, but without better funding it might be hard to make it fully accessible to all
• even with GitHub SSO/Web Federation we might still need to limit access to a specific GitHub Group

[BenjamenMeyer]

Digital Ocean:

• DO Spaces, their AWS S3 API, is probably the best on cost for us and most resilient (priced per GB)
• a DO Droplet will work, and we can add a Volume if we need more than 25GB of space on a cheap per GB cost

We might be able to setup a SSH-based server; but the DO Spaces would require some kind of proxy service, either local or on our own server.

[Loki1950]

I would certainly endorse a limited access model here as it would be hosting our master copies of our art assets after all our assets are already in use by an other FOSS game project though they are 2D.