Should our built versions of dependencies be stored in a GitHub repository?

[Bzomak]

In the old build process, pre-built dependencies are currently stored in GitHub repositories. In the new process, we source and build them ourselves. Should we store these? The question is applicable to both the built libraries and the original source code.

Pros:

• Not building dependencies would save time
• If for some reason their source site went offline we would already have the dependencies stored.

Cons:

• The point of the new build method is to be able to easily build all dependencies, guarantee that they will run, and to make it simple to update them.
• The chances of the dependencies becoming unavailable is highly unlikely.
• It would be another set of repositories to maintain, and an additional complication in the build process.

[Bzomak]

If pre-built dependencies were to be stored in a repository, then it would be logical for that repository to be responsible for building them. Ideally they would be build using GitHub Actions and committed after a successful build.

Updates would probably need to be run manually with workflow_dispatch