Is there a way to get around vcpkg_from_github commands grabbing zip sources release when not availible?

[Cazadorro]

We are trying to implement security protocols where we heavily restrict online usage (to the point where most things can't be accessed) however, we can host git repos internally. However, hosting the entire set of release binaries/source zips is not practical is it can be rather large. Since most of the time we only need zips from vcpkg_from_github, but that those sources should match the unzipped sources, is it possible to just... have these commands download the source like normal instead of through a hosted zip? Or is the another solution for self hosting that's actually scalable and will work with most packages that follow vcpkg_from_github/gitlab?

[dg0yt]

is it possible to just... have these commands download the source like normal instead of through a hosted zip?

What do you mean by "normal" and "hosted zip"?

vcpkg_from_github downloads on-the-fly archives.
You can use asset caching or prepare the downloads directory to avoid fresh downloads. (You really should use some caching.)
You can use vcpkg install --only-downloads ... to collect most sources. (Unfortunately it is implemented as an incomplete build, not as a clean download. YMMV.)

[Cazadorro]

vcpkg_from_github downloads on-the-fly archives.

If we could get it to not do that, and just download the source, everything would just work.

You can use asset caching or prepare the downloads directory to avoid fresh downloads

We looked up asset caching, and the documentation seemed... too sparse. The only example I see is some azure thing, it's not clear to me that this is a thing we can just "use", we can't use azure services, is specifying x-azurl just a format thing? And this appears to require us to do a full build of dependencies on an identical system, which is potentially difficult. I tried looking up cross compilation, but it doesn't seem to work with out doing some serious leg work that just didn't seem worth it.

[dg0yt]

Maybe asset caching isn't offering all the variants of binary caching. At least there is also x-script and an example how to use that for Nuget. And "x-azurl ... is intended to work with Azure Blob Storage containers, but works just as well with other service providers and even local or network filesystems" subject to the URL. There is an example with the file: protocol.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/vcpkg/users/assetcaching
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/vcpkg/consume/asset-caching
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/vcpkg/examples/asset-caching-source-nuget

And again, instead of a "full build", there is --only-downloads pseudo-build. For most ports, this should do the right thing to get the source assets for a given host triplet and target triplet. (Otherwise please report port bugs.)