[Feature]: Read linked files with only warnings rather than errors

[oruebel]

What would you like to see added to HDMF?

It would be nice to be able to read files that are created by linking with only warnings rather than errors, when one of the files is missing, for example. For example, sharing a file with only processed data to others and they can still read the files, rather than they only have to also download the raw files that tend to be big.

This issue has been originally filed by @tuanpham96 in PyNWB#1742. Transferring this issue here since this will need to be addressed in HDMF.

Is your feature request related to a problem?

No response

What solution would you like?

When loading in a file that's supposed to link to an external file that is missing, the I/O backend should just throw warnings as MISSING data and still allow users to read the data inside that file. For missing data, this could possibly be to return a DataIO wrapper for missing data. This may not be trivial in cases where the data is required on read (e.g, if an init of a container does error checking).

Do you have any interest in helping implement the feature?

Yes.

Code of Conduct

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