(In reply to jeremyb from comment #0)

Generally, the default for GLAM uploads should be to transfer images over
internet (even if the files are so big that they need to uploaded
server-side by a shell user).

But occasionally the best method to transfer the data will be sneakernet
(post office or another courier).

In the case of a physical shipment it should still be possible to use
GWToolset to generate the description pages, etc. for files which are
connected directly to a prod server. Does the extension need access to the
files in order to generate the description pages?

Yes it does. And furthermore it needs http(s?) access to the file

See Bug 68264 and Bug 67477 comment 13; I think it's currently impossible
for a disk to be hooked up directly to a server in a way that GWToolset
could access the files.

So I'm thinking maybe we could do the other way around: have GWToolset
generate batches of description pages that could then be used by the
existing [[mediawikiwiki:Manual:importImages.php]] process. (so the
extension would not itself be doing any uploads)

But I don't know enough about GWToolset to know if this is feasible.

I don't really see how its applicable to the extension. For use with importImages.php you'd need to generate text files, in which case you would want the program to be run locally on your computer not on wiki.

I suppose you could make the extension generate image description pages without uploading any images, (yielding a bunch of pages in the File namespace without an associated file), and then use importImages.php to import the image (If no file desc specified, I believe that script just leaves the file page contents alone)