<div dir="ltr">Hi everyone,<br><br>Please disregard this message if you are not a Java software developer or otherwise interested in OME or LOCI source code.<br><br>We have recently made two major organizational changes to the OME & LOCI Java software repository structures.<br>
<br>1) We have split the LOCI software codebase on <a href="http://skyking.microscopy.wisc.edu">skyking.microscopy.wisc.edu</a> into separate component subtrees. For example, Bio-Formats is now in its own components/bio-formats, and no longer mixed together with source code from any other component.<br>
<br>It is now possible to build each component as a standalone entity, although at this time it is still required to check out LOCI's complete Java codebase in order to compile, as many components depend on one another for compilation, and the component build scripts derive from a common base script.<br>
<br>There is also still a master Ant build script in the base folder, with the same targets as before -- they just work a bit differently under the hood. Please note that the dist-* targets (for VisBio and SLIM Plotter) are currently nonfunctional, as we have not yet updated them to correspond to the new structure.<br>
<br>Hopefully this split will allow developers to more effectively focus on the modules that interest them, and reduce confusion about dependencies between modules. It will also enable us to deploy an Ivy-driven dependency resolution scheme at some point in the future.<br>
<br>2) We have separated the OME-Java library into two separate modules: the OME-XML Java library for working with OME-XML metadata structures (ome-xml.jar, ome.xml.* packages), and the OME-Java API for communicating with an OME Server via XML-RPC (ome-java.jar, org.openmicroscopy.* packages).<br>
<br>The OME-Java API package now resides on the OME SVN server as part of the
OME Server project, in the src/java subtree. See
<a href="http://www.openmicroscopy.org/site/documents/data-management/ome-server/developer/java-api">http://www.openmicroscopy.org/site/documents/data-management/ome-server/developer/java-api</a>
for further details.<br>
<br>The OME-XML Java library package now resides on LOCI's SVN server, in the components/ome-xml subtree. See <a href="http://www.loci.wisc.edu/ome/ome-xml-java.html">http://www.loci.wisc.edu/ome/ome-xml-java.html</a> for more information.<br>
<br>The rationale for this change is that as the OME-XML Java library evolved, it dropped its dependencies on the OME-Java API and became a standalone entity -- as such, it makes more sense to package these two modules separately so that developers can use one without needing to worry about the other's dependencies. Specifically, the Bio-Formats library uses the OME-XML Java library code as the backbone for its OME metadata support, but does not need the functionality provided by the OME-Java API. (LOCI does have a Bio-Formats-based reader/writer implementation for communicating with an OME Server, which we call OME I/O, but it is now organized as a separate component in the components/ome-io subtree.)<br>
<br>Please let us know if you have any questions about these changes, or notice any problems relating to them.<br><br>Cheers,<br>Curtis<br></div>