Move documentation images away from the `main` branch
Problem to solve
We currently store all documentation images in src/assets
on the main
branch.
The images currently take about 13 MB.
This has several problems:
-
It increases the size of the repository for cloning
-
All pictures need to be referenced in
README.md
with absolute URLs (because the README is also rendered in the Marketplace)- this means that we need to use links in a format like https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-vscode-extension/raw/main/src/assets/_diff-comments.gif in the MR, but they don't work till the MR gets merged to
main
- this means that we need to use links in a format like https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-vscode-extension/raw/main/src/assets/_diff-comments.gif in the MR, but they don't work till the MR gets merged to
-
The images are in the wrong folder (I'd expect
src/
folder to contain files needed for the extension runtime) -
some of these images get packaged with the extension, where they increase the download size without any purpose (this could be "fixed"1 without removing the images from
main
)~/.v/e/g/s/assets ❯❯❯ ll Permissions Size User Date Modified Name .rw-r--r-- 27k tomas 13 Jul 15:01 gitlab-logo.png .rw-r--r-- 207k tomas 13 Jul 15:01 gitlab-vscode.png drwxr-xr-x - tomas 13 Jul 15:01 images .rw-r--r-- 892k tomas 13 Jul 15:01 insert-multi-file-snippet.gif .rw-r--r-- 149k tomas 13 Jul 15:01 logo.png .rw-r--r-- 44k tomas 13 Jul 15:01 pipeline-actions.png .rw-r--r-- 74k tomas 13 Jul 15:01 screencast-cover.jpg ~/.v/e/g/s/assets ❯❯❯ pwd /Users/tomas/.vscode-insiders/extensions/gitlab.gitlab-workflow-3.26.0/src/assets
This is controled by the expression in
.vsignore
file
Proposal
There are two options I can think of:
- put the images outside of git (e.g. imgur.com)
- put the images into a separate git branch (e.g.
images
ordocumentation-assets
) and make this branch protected
My preference would be the images
protected branch.
Further details
The migration must happen in several steps:
- copy the images outside of the
main
branch and change the links inREADME.md
-
Wait for a few months (because older versions of the README still reference the resources in
main
branch) - Remove the images from the main brach.
Links / references
-
Fixed is in quotes because, without some automated checking, we are bound to forget to put the
_
prefix to some future documentation image.↩