Pictures for ReVanced Patches

[oSumAtrIX]

Conclusion so far

• Hosting links is not viable due to needing a CDN, requiring the user to have internet, and needing to leak IPs and anyone who also creates their own patches would have to deal with this; pictures have to be embedded in the ReVanced Patches files

Open questions

• Pictures for patches mean that an annotation has to be made in ReVanced Patcher, but why would ReVanced Patcher support pictures? It doesn't belong there since neither ReVanced Patches nor ReVanced CLI need it for their purposes.
• Embedding files would bloat the repository; the only way to overcome this is Git Large File Storage

PS: Once a comment is resolved, it is marked as resolved to make room for other comments.

RE: https://discord.com/channels/952946952348270622/953965039105232906/1134158250867183806

[alexandreteles]

We have an open issue for the CDN: ReVanced/revanced-cdn-action#15

It's attributed to @PalmDevs and @reisxd (the JS devs kek). The infrastructure side of this issue is already done. We only need to finish the CI/CD aspect of it.

[oSumAtrIX]

The following has been concluded already:

Hosting links is not viable due to [...] requiring the user to have internet, and needing to leak IPs and anyone who also creates their own patches would have to deal with this; pictures have to be embedded in the ReVanced Patches files

[alexandreteles]

The need for a CDN would be one less issue; the others would remain. Leaking IPs can be solved by proxying requests via our API, and I wonder if embedding the image files wouldn't result in considerably larger bundles.

[oSumAtrIX]

Yes, the need for a CDN is less of an issue, but its other problems would remain, such as leaking the IP or having others that provide patches themselves host a CDN.

I wonder if embedding the image files wouldn't result in considerably larger bundles.

This is currently an "Open question" in the discussion description:

Embedding files would bloat the repository; the only way to overcome this is Git Large File Storage

[alexandreteles]

LFS is quite costly on GitHub. We would not pass the free 1GB tier fast enough for it to be an issue, but it should be considered before making this decision. Let's say we decide on using LFS; which image formats would we accept, and which requirements would be in place for PRs that include images to be accepted?

[oSumAtrIX]

Implementation details, such as which format we chose for the images, would be something for later.
If LFS is not a solution, the only way to embed images is by adding them to the repository. as assets. With +140 patches and approximately 100 images, the file could grow, maybe considerably, but it does not excuse the issues that a CDN would bring with (such as having to host it, it being "decoupled" from the patches, leaking IP and so on)