[sowbug]

Thanks for all your contributions.

Do you think it's time for version numbers in filenames? Or at least a sha256sum of the merged files when they're big enough to require splitting?

Even with gigabit fiber, it still takes a long time to download model files, and I usually merge split files and toss the parts when I'm done. So by the time I have a full model, I've often lost track of exactly when I downloaded it, so I can't tell whether I have the latest. For non-split models, I can compare the sha256sum on HF, but not for split ones I've already merged. That's why I think we could use version numbers.

[danielhanchen]

Thanks! Oh we do split if over 50GB - do you mean also split on 50GB shards? HuggingFace XET has an interesting feature where each file is divided into blocks, so it'll do a SHA256 on each block, and only update blocks

[sowbug]

That might be the answer -- something like BitTorrent that updates only the parts that need updating.

But I do think I'm identifying an unmet need. Qwen3.5-122B-A10B-BF16.gguf, for example: what's its sha256sum? I don't think the HF UI will tell you. I can only download the shards, verify each shard's sha256sum (which the HF UI does provide), llama-gguf-split --merge them, and then sha256sum the merged file myself. But I can't independently confirm that final sha256sum from any other source I trust.