Distribution

Create your own update site

Steps

Installation

Advantages

Disadvantages

• Create your update site, then upload your extension to it.
• You may add your update site to the list of built-in sites by editing the list of update sites page.
• To release a new version, upload it to the update site.

• Users enable the update site to receive your extension.
• ImageJ's Updater automatically checks for updates from all enabled update sites.

• You do not need server space to host your extensions; you can use a hosted update site on sites.imagej.net.
• Alternately, you can retain full control by hosting your update site yourself.
• Users are notified of updates without needing to check proactively.
• The updater manages dependencies for you.
• You can automate distribution using the command line updater.

• The original ImageJ does not support update sites; users will need to use ImageJ2 (or Fiji: "Fiji Is Just ImageJ2").
• You will miss out on the tools and tests used to ensure compatibility and reproducibility, making undetected breakages much more likely (at the least).

• Make a post on the ImageJ forum to initiate a request.

• Users install Fiji, or enable the Fiji update site.

• Your extension is available with Fiji out of the box.
• A Fiji maintainer will help you to manage your project.
• You can lean on existing tools and documentation to maintain reproducibility of your project.
• Your project will always be compatible with the latest Fiji distribution.
• GitHub Actions automatically tests your project for errors, deploying successful builds to the SciJava Maven repository.

• You must abide by the Fiji contribution requirements.
• You must rely on a Fiji maintainer (for now) to upload new versions for you.

• Create an archive (TAR, ZIP, etc.).
• Upload the archive to the relevant web space, and link it.

• Users download the archive, unpacking it into ImageJ's plugins folder.

• You avoid the activation barrier of learning to use the Updater.
• ImageJ2 is not required to install the extension.

• Users must find your plugin via a link or web search.
• Users must perform a manual installation procedure.
• Users must manually check for later updates.
• Users will report bugs found in outdated versions of the extension.

• Create an account on GitHub.
• Create a new repository for your project.
• Push your code there.
• Learn Git to manage your code effectively.

• Git is an incredibly powerful way to keep track of your code.
• GitHub greatly facilitates collaboration: sharing ideas and patches.
• Seriously: Git and GitHub are amazing tools, and you will be orders of magnitude less effective without them.
• "Doing it in public" is a great way to stop sucking and be awesome instead.
• All of ImageJ, ImageJ2, Fiji and related SciJava projects are hosted on GitHub.

• Git has a steep learning curve—the GitHub Desktop client makes things easier.

• Request a Fiji maintainer create a repository for you and add you as a contributor.
• Meet the Fiji contribution requirements.

• All the benefits of GitHub.
• A Fiji maintainer helps you to manage your project.

• You must abide by the Fiji contribution requirements.

• Similar to GitHub, but using BitBucket instead.

• Similar to GitHub.

• ImageJ and related projects are hosted on GitHub, not BitBucket.
• BitBucket has a smaller user base than GitHub does.

• Similar to GitHub, but using SourceForge instead.

• SourceForge predates GitHub; some people prefer it.

• The interface is not as powerful as GitHub and BitBucket:
  • Common workflows require many more mouse clicks.
  • The user interfaces of GitHub and BitBucket provide much better guidance.
  • SourceForge's servers tend to be very slow compared to GitHub and BitBucket.
  • The collaboration features are vastly inferior.
• SourceForge has a lot of downtime. (The ImageJ mirrors of SourceForge projects hence have a lot of problems.)
• Using SourceForge is highly discouraged compared to other code hosting sites.

• Create an archive (TAR, ZIP, etc.).
• Upload the archive to the relevant web space, and link it.
• Users download and unpack the archive.

• You avoid the activation barrier of learning a revision control system.

• No revision control system.
• No easy browsing of source code online.
• No easy submission of patches.
• No finding the code in web searches.
• No reading the change logs to understand why changes were made.
• No studying the history to better understand the project's activity.
• No bisecting the history to track down when bugs were introduced.
• No safety net to revert unwanted changes or avoid lost work.
• No branching to maintain multiple development trajectories.
• No easy switching between versions.
• No automatic credit and tracking of which authors did which work.
• No distribution and backup of the project's development history.

• Create a page for your extension.

• The ImageJ wiki is a central repository of ImageJ-related community knowledge and documentation.
• The ImageJ wiki uses Jekyll with GitHub Pages; see [Editing the Wiki](/editing) for details.

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• Request an account from an IIDP administrator.
• Create a page for your extension.

• The ImageJ Information and Documentation Portal predates the ImageJ wiki, and many extensions are still primarily documented there.
• The IIDP is a fairly active wiki (but not compared to this one!).
• The ImageJ developers hope to unify these two wikis in the future.

• The IIDP documents only the original ImageJ, not ImageJ2.
• You must explicitly request an IIDP account from an administrator.
• The wiki uses Plone, a lesser known CMS engine.

• Prepare an HTML page modeled after the list of ImageJ plugins.
• Email it to Wayne Rasband, the developer of ImageJ, and sole maintainer of the ImageJ website.

• Listed on the ImageJ website.

• Not collaborative. No one else can edit the ImageJ website—not even you!
• Hence, turnaround time on updates is longer.
• The list of plugins there is extensive and difficult to sort through.

• Total control of the content

• Nonstandard location. Users may have trouble finding your documentation.
• Not collaborative. No one else can improve the documentation.
• If your site goes down, users lose access to the information. (This happened with the 3D Viewer and VIB Protocol on multiple occasions. And the MBF Plugin Collection went permanently offline!)