Resolve used samples like we do with code dependencies?

[xetra11]

When starting a project and trying to share it I stumble over the problem not being really able to share the the samples I use as well - only the code.

What SonicPi might need is some kind of repository for used samples.
Much like we use maven or gradle. There should be a way to publish, install or build a SonicPi project. This will bundle all the used samples and combine it in a package that one can upload in a repository for SonicPi samples.

Then we only need some kind of package manager for Sonic Pi or a gradle plugin.
Given a gradle plugin we could do something like:

build.gradle.kts:

dependencies {
    samplePackage("com.xetra11:sonic-pi-samples:0.1.0")
}

Now if I share my SonicPi project with this sample dependency file and try to play the project first an internal gradle client will resolve the mentioned sample package depdency and voila we have a shareable project including samples.

Just an idea from a guy with no music producing experience. I have no idea if this is "allowed" tho (in terms of licensing rights etc.)

[iamjonny]

Love it, imagine this may be in the pipeline, and may be made more achievable with advancements in coding technologies, but may take some time 🤷‍♂️

Until then, do you know if GitLFS could help in the mix, any issues with that in theory that you can think of?

Just an idea, as you probably don't want the "noise" of audio resources (binary data?)

Alternatively, I wonder if any of the cloud things would be perfectly suited for this - the barriers to access should be minimal, so ideally scriptable via a package manager wherever possible, with no need to enter api keys into source.... That may leave us with oauth stuff, and any other publicly available stuff...

SoundCloud and Google drive are the first that spring to mind, and fairly common in code comments to see source urls, but agree stuff like this would be superb

[samaaron]

One problem that any technical solution in this space needs to be extremely conscious of is copyright.

I feel that from a maintainer's perspective I don't want to personally take on any liability for the individual activities of users of Sonic Pi. Therefore, whilst a central sample repo would make a lot of sense from a practical perspective it doesn't from a legal one (sadly).

All my thoughts in this area typically migrate to managing the MD5 hashes and metadata of samples - leaving the location and the management of that location to the user. I see no legal reason why Sonic Pi couldn't help people talk about samples and information about samples - it just doesn't make sense for Sonic Pi to directly manipulate/store those samples from a centralised perspective.