No write access to directory where data is stored.

[bascrezee]

I am raising this issue, since it might help in building an (even) more user-friendly interface for the ismn package. For my setup, I have no write access to the directory in which the ISMN data is stored. The whole institute has read access, but only data managers have write access. Therefore, I get an error when the package is trying to create the metadata directory (python_metadata).

I see a few potential solutions (either on the side of the user, the package maintainer, or the data provider):

• Copy all the data (not a nice solution)
• Working with symbolic links pointing from my own directories to the data directory (not tested yet, but might work)
• Add the feature to ismn that the user can specify another directory where the metadata file can be written
• Supply the metadata file together with the data instead, only the paths need to be added in some way

Just some suggestions, I didn't think about them in detail yet, and maybe there are more. I hope it is useful feedback. It relates a bit to #9 .

[sebhahn]

I think option 3 (custom path to store metadata) is realistic. I started working on a new interface #12 and try implementing it

[cpaulik]

How backwards compatible will the new interface be? If not then we should maybe also implement the relative paths and the metadata location setting in the current interface.

[sebhahn]

It will be a complete separate interface