<div dir="ltr"><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><div>Hi everyone,</div><div><br></div><div>For some time, Fiji has been shipping Bio-Formats builds from the <b>develop</b> branch of Bio-Formats (i.e., 4.5.x), rather than from the <b>dev_4_4</b> branch (i.e., 4.4.x). There were several reasons for this:</div>
<div><br></div><div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34)">1) There is still work on <b>develop</b> that is not part of <b>dev_4_4</b> and hence not part of any released version of Bio-Formats. In particular, I made major improvements to the Prairie format reader a few months ago, which became part of <b>develop</b> but not yet <b>dev_4_4</b>.</div>
<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"><br></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34)">2) There was a technical issue with the ImageJ updater which prevented us from switching back to 4.4.x releases or builds.</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34)">
<br></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34)">The Prairie work is now pending inclusion in <b>dev_4_4</b>:</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"><a href="https://github.com/openmicroscopy/bioformats/pull/508" target="_blank">https://github.com/openmicroscopy/bioformats/pull/508</a><br>
</div><div></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"><br></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34)">And the ImageJ updater issue has now been fixed:</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"><a href="http://trac.imagej.net/ticket/1603" target="_blank">http://trac.imagej.net/ticket/1603</a><br>
</div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"><br></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34)">So I have now uploaded Fiji to use <b>dev_4_4</b> again. As documented on the Fiji wiki (<a href="http://fiji.sc/Bio-Formats#Source_code" target="_blank">http://fiji.sc/Bio-Formats#Source_code</a>), Fiji's <b>fiji</b> branch (<a href="http://github.com/fiji/bioformats/tree/fiji" target="_blank">http://github.com/fiji/bioformats/tree/fiji</a>) reflects the version of Bio-Formats currently available from the Fiji updater. At the moment, that is <b>dev_4_4</b> with PR #508 merged in, to ensure the Prairie fixes remain available to end users.</div>
<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"><br></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34)">Unfortunately, reverting Fiji to dev_4_4 served as a forcible reminder that I forgot a critically important reason why we were using <b>develop</b> builds:</div>
<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"><br></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34)">3) ImgLib2 and ImageJ2 depend on <b>develop</b>. And Fiji inherits the ImageJ update site, which is what ImageJ2 uses. So now, there is an impending issue with the ImageJ 2.0.0-beta-7 release: the ImageJ update site will need to switch back to <b>develop</b> builds again for beta7.</div>
</div></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><br></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">Switching back to <b>dev_4_4</b> has also very likely broken any existing ImageJ2 beta installations that update to the latest code. (Since ImageJ2 is still in beta, I am less concerned about that, though it is still not ideal.)</div>
<div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><br></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">Moving forward, ImageJ will increasingly depend on the SCIFIO refactoring work, which is all based on <b>develop</b>. If we want to also provide a stable Bio-Formats update site for ImageJ from <a href="http://openmicroscopy.org" target="_blank">openmicroscopy.org</a> (which was the tentative eventual plan), we will need to carefully consider how to accomplish that. It can probably be done but may require shipping 4.4.x and 4.5.x side by side, which would be rather unfortunate.</div>
<div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><br></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">Regards,</div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">Curtis</div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">
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