On Wednesday 09 August 2006 09:17, Przemko wrote:
> I was just wondering, would it be possible to have ImageJ to check for
> updates automatically every time the program is launched? And then give
> an option, update, don't update, ask in a month etc... All that the
> program would have to do is compare the dates of the imagej.jar files (I
> think- never programmed before :). Could it be done?
Yes, it is a good idea. This has been thought about before. I added it
recently to the wishlist in the tudor site:
http://imagejdocu.tudor.lu/imagej-documenation-wiki/wishlist(if you are registered, you can also add items to the wishlist).
Two things come to mind:
1. I do not think it is sensible to have it *every* time the program is
launched, but as a separate command that one wants to run.
One reason is privacy/security (not that I mind Wayne knowing that I am
running IJ, I am sure he already knows that I am running it every day ;-) )
but the rather that programs better not be doing things that one does not
have knowledge or control.
Perhaps this is also likely to generate a lot of unnecessary traffic and will
delay the launching of the program itself while dealing with the connection
to the IJ site depending on whether the computer is online, the server is
online, etc.
Also the note that updates come about twice a month (so it is overkill to
check it every time you run IJ) and the daily updates are not documented (so
you do not know what is different).
2. Somebody will have to come with a way of downloading the ij.jar file and
overwrite it while IJ is running. This causes problems. If I overwrite this
file, at least in linux, I have problems shutting down IJ to restart.
If such command was implemented, it would be a good idea to also download to
the IJ directory the functions.html and the notes.html files, and add links
to these in the Help menu.
I do not know how easy it would be to add a checksum to the download to verify
the integrity of the download, but perhaps it would be a plus.
Cheers,
Gabriel
Locked
