Reduce the size of the bids examples repository and rewrite the history

[Remi-Gau]

the bids examples repo is now close to a 100 Mo: this is really not ideal for something meant to be lightweight

Most of the weight comes from the stimuli examples.

$ du -h -d 0  */stimuli | sort -rh
23M    eeg_ds000117/stimuli
8,1M    eeg_ds003645s_hed/stimuli
8,1M    eeg_ds003645s_hed_longform/stimuli
8,1M    eeg_ds003645s_hed_inheritance/stimuli
2,0M    fnirs_automaticity/stimuli

Given that sitmuli folder content is almost completely unspecified in the BIDS specification it seems excessive that they would take so much space.

Discussed during the last maintainers meeting, our first approach would be to zero the content of any stimuli file in there and then rewrite the history.

Pinging @VisLab to get the opinion of the HED team.
Should we be concerned that not having examples of the actual stimuli images may reduce the usefulness of the examples when it to understand the hed tags?

[Remi-Gau]

What ever decision we agree on, the history of the repo may need to be rewritten:

• The repository is too big #119

[VisLab]

We can remove the stimuli directories. The dataset on OpenNeuro has them. Do you want me to do it?

…

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[Remi-Gau]

We can remove the stimuli directories. The dataset on OpenNeuro has them. Do you want me to do it?

If you can do it that'd be much appreciated.

No need to remove them, you can simply truncate the datafiles in them:

https://github.com/bids-standard/bids-examples/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md#how-to-truncate-data-files-to-0kb

[Remi-Gau]

Amended the title of this issue to reflect the steps left to do

[yarikoptic]

FWIW, recently-ish added git-replace command could be of help after history rewrite to establish "continuity" of history. See e.g. https://andrewlock.net/reducing-the-size-of-a-git-repository-with-git-replace/ .