[ImageJ-devel] [fiji-devel] Fiji updater operates on what directories and what file types?

[Johannes Schindelin]

Hi Joseph Collin,

On Mon, 30 Dec 2013, Poczatek, Joseph Collin wrote:

> I haven't been able to find this in the docs, but I was wondering what
> the Fiji (or is it IJ2 now?) updater can push to a 3rd party update site.

It is both: the Fiji Updater now *is* the ImageJ updater.

And yes, it can upload to 3rdparty update sites, as detailed in
http://fiji.sc/Adding_Update_Sites

> Poking around I think that only some directories will be looked at:
> Fiji.app/plugins/
> Fiji.app/luts/
> Fiji.app/jars/
> Fiji.app/macros/
> Fiji.app/scripts/
> 
> And only file types:
> .class/.jar
> .lut
> .txt
> appropriate macro/script extensions (.ijm, .py, .rb, etc)

Almost correct. The file extensions accepted are dependent on the
top-level directory. In plugins/ for example, .class, .jar, .ijm and
script extensions are allowed, but not .lut. In luts/, only .lut are
allowed. In lib/ (which you did not mention), there is no limitation on
file extensions.

This restrictions are not for dictatorship reasons, BTW, but to prevent
surprises from incorrect usage of the updater.

> Am I correct? What I was attempting was to push a 1-2 bash script that
> was just "ImageJ-linux64 --all-my-special-args..." and having no
> extension or .sh didn't take.

Bash scripts cannot be executed by ImageJ, hence it does not make too much
sense for the updater to ship them. Having said that, you could upload
them into, say, lib/.

> I can think of several workarounds, the most obvious is to create
> Fiji.app/scripts/mything.bsh where I guess the worst that could happen
> is someone tries to run it as a beanshell script.
> 
> Is there a better way to do this? I can also think of other use cases
> besides this specific one.

It is a very dangerous thing to let random people specify the way you run
things, therefore my suggested way would be to ship the Bash scripts
separately to the users (so they know they are from a trusted source, and
so they know to to complain to when their Windows machine has no clue how
to run Bash scripts).

Ciao,
Johannes