Document how Fiji versioning works

[qgreen63]

Downloading the latest Mac release for Fiji actually downloads the 2.9.0 version, despite the latest release being 2.11.0

[ctrueden]

@qgreen63 Yes, this is intended. The developer-facing 2.10.0 and 2.11.0 releases have not made their way to the core update site yet, and the latest download matches the contents of the core update site. If you want to follow the progress, see this Image.sc forum topic. Unfortunately, there are a couple of issues that need to be ironed out before we can upload 2.11.0 to users.

[qgreen63]

Is there any documentation as to which is the current stable release version, I cannot seem to find any.

[ctrueden]

@qgreen63 Good question. I don't think so, unfortunately. Where would you suggest I write up an explanation? The page https://imagej.net/software/fiji/downloads could work...

How did you learn that 2.11.0 is the latest release? Due to use of the sc.fiji:fiji Maven artifact, perhaps?

[qgreen63]

I saw the version number in the "Vital Statistics" pane on this page: https://imagej.net/software/fiji/

That page would work. I am attempting to automatically deploy and update fiji on a fleet of macs. The builtin updater requires permissions that the users do not have, so the new versions need to be downloaded and installed via the management software we are using. The app itself does not have version info where mac apps usually do (which should probably be opened as an issue itself). I can scrape a web page for version info to figure it out manually, but without a release log page or any documented version info I can find that is impossible to do automatically.

[ctrueden]

I am reopening this issue with an adjusted title, to note the need to document how Fiji's versioning works on the wiki.

I am attempting to automatically deploy and update fiji on a fleet of macs. The builtin updater requires permissions that the users do not have, so the new versions need to be downloaded and installed via the management software we are using.

Gotcha. For the time being, the best way to deploy and update Fiji without using the Updater is probably to grab the latest ZIPs from https://downloads.imagej.net/fiji/latest/, unpacking it over top of the previous installation, if any.

The app itself does not have version info where mac apps usually do (which should probably be opened as an issue itself).

Indeed, there are a couple:

• Fiji application version not present in Contents/Info.plist fiji/fiji#229
• Update version information Info.plist in the updater imagej-updater#25

I can scrape a web page for version info to figure it out manually, but without a release log page or any documented version info I can find that is impossible to do automatically.

$ curl -Ifs https://downloads.imagej.net/fiji/latest/fiji-win64.zip | grep 'Last-Modified'
Last-Modified: Thu, 01 Dec 2022 15:46:43 GMT

Would this work to discern the last modified date, to decide whether an update is needed?

See also:

• Make it possible to completely disable the ImageJ updater imagej-updater#7
• Consider creating a Homebrew tap for ImageJ2 imagej2#124

[qgreen63]

Yes, looking at the last modified date is sufficient to decide if an update is needed, however the solution I am using for the actual installs uses version numbers to determine if the downloaded package is indeed a newer version that should be installed. While I could inject the last modified date in to the versioning info and use that as the version number, I would prefer to use the actual version number...