Artifact-specific packages

Tooling Package Management
1

I want to bundle together with my package a “.jld2” file with a DataFrame.
This DataFrame is provided as an alternative option: it is not loaded by default, however, I am going to supplement the package with a function, that loads it if needed.

There are quite a few package, that are only needed in the case the user decides to download this DataFrame: JLD2, DataFrames, etc.
Is there a way to isolate artifact-specific packages, so that they are pulled only if the artifact is used?

2

Does DataDeps.jl or Requires.jl do what you are looking for?

3

The obvious no-dependency solution is to use serialization instead of JLD2, and a base julia table (vector-of-namedtuples or namedtuple-of-vectors) instead of DataFrames. Then you only need a lazy artifact with data itself.
Would that work for you?

4

In the end, I have decided to split this functionality into a package of its own.