[ome-devel] Customising OMERO client software

[josh.moore at gmx.de]

Woodbridge, Mark R writes:
 > Hi,

Hi Mark.

 > I'm interested in modifying the OMERO client software (Importer and
 > Insight), initially with the following objectives:
 > 
 >  - Supporting a new file format (SPCImage .sdt, which is already
 > partially supported by the Bio-Formats library)
 > 
 >  - Making a couple of other minor customisations (cosmetic and
 > functional) to support our deployment at Imperial College London.
 > 
 > I have two questions related to this:
 > 
 >  - What is the quickest and easiest way to rebuild the clients? I've
 > tried 'java omero dist withtools' which does complete successfully but
 > takes a long time (including building the Blitz server), and when it has
 > completed I can't figure out how to run the clients!

"dist withtools" is a bit overkill then for what you are wanting to do.

  java omero quick build &&
  cd components/tools/OmeroImporter &&
  ant install &&
  java -jar target/standalone/OmeroImporter.jar

Is the quickest route to getting the importer to run at the
moment. Have you already gotten the insight code from the other svn
repository?

 >  - A clean checkout of OMERO doesn't automatically build in Eclipse...
 > The source folders list doesn't look right and there are missing
 > libraries. Is there something I need to do make this work?

The Eclipse relies on the ant build to function properly. I've updated
the section on eclipse to explain that:

https://trac.openmicroscopy.org.uk/omero/wiki/OmeroDevelopment

 >  - There appears to six copies of the Bio-Formats configuration file
 > (readers.txt) in the OMERO source tree. I'm assuming that I need to
 > modify this file in order to enable .sdt import, but which copy should I
 > modify? This is further complicated by the fact that I need to configure
 > the resultant SDTReader to flatten the lifetime planes, for which there
 > doesn't seem to be any hooks in OMERO.

We're in the process of restructuring the importer code. Several of
those readers.txt will disappear before release. But I'll let Brian
answer which one(s) will remain. 

 > Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
 > 
 > Regards,
 > 
 > Mark.

Cheers,
~Josh