JIPipe

A graphical batch processing language for image analysis.

https://www.jipipe.org/

Zoltán Cseresnyés, Ruman Gerst, Marc Thilo Figge

Research Group Applied Systems Biology - Head: Prof. Dr. Marc Thilo Figge
https://www.leibniz-hki.de/en/applied-systems-biology.html
HKI-Center for Systems Biology of Infection
Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology - Hans Knöll Institute (HKI)
Adolf-Reichwein-Straße 23, 07745 Jena, Germany

The project code is licensed under MIT.
See the LICENSE file provided with the code for the full license.

Project structure

The project consists of following parts:

• JIPipe-Core provides all basic functionality, such as the graph model, projects, and the GUI
• JIPipe-Annotation provides algorithms and data types for handling annotation data.
• JIPipe-Filesystem provides algorithms and data types for handling filesystem data.
• JIPipe-IJ integrates ImageJ data types.
• JIPipe-IJ-Algorithms integrates ImageJ algorithms.
• JIPipe-IJ-Multi-Template-Matching integrates the ImageJ multi-template matching plugin.
• JIPipe-IJ-OMERO integrates OMERO.
• JIPipe-Multiparameters provides algorithms and data types for handling parameter data. It contains the data source algorithms to define parameters.
• JIPipe-Plots provides data types and algorithms for generating plots.
• JIPipe-Python provides a Python-scripting node.
• JIPipe-Tables provides algorithms and data types to handle table data.
• JIPipe-Strings provides algorithms and data types for handling string data.
• JIPipe-Utils provides some helpful utility extensions.
• JIPipe-Forms provides core functions to allow user interaction during pipeline runs.
• JIPipe-Cellpose provides integration of Cellpose
• JIPipe-Launcher provides a JAR file that launches JIPipe from outside of ImageJ
• IJ-Updater-CLI is an alternative way to trigger ImageJ updates. This is used within the installer tools.

You can use the JIPipe-Launcher project to setup a development environment, as this project depends on all libraries. Due to internal dependencies, some data types are present in the JIPipe-Core library, but not registered into the JIPipe runtime.

Building JIPipe

You will need following packages:

• Java 8 (newer versions do not work until supported by SciJava)
• Maven (please make sure Maven runs with Java 8)

Generate packages

mvn package

You will find the generated *.jar files in ./*/target folders. Copy them into the ImageJ plugins or jar directory. JIPipe requires some dependency libraries that need to be installer. These dependencies also have to be provided. This repository comes with automated tools that downloaded dependencies and to create packages that are ready-to-install.

Generating a package with dependencies

You can find a script build.sh in dist/zip. It will package the output of an existing mvn package run with all necessary dependencies, README files, and licenses into a zip file.

This requires Linux or MacOS. On Windows you can install MSYS2, Cygwin, or use WSL. Also ensure that the zip utility is installed.

# Ensure that the project is built
mvn package

# Navigate into the dist folder
cd dist/zip

# Run the package script
./build.sh

Generating installers

This repository comes with scripts to generate installers for Linux, Mac, and Windows. These installers assume that you have built JIPipe (mvn package).

Following requirements are needed for these installers to work:

• Windows: The installer utilizes NSIS and requires some additional libraries (see README in dist/jipipe-windows-installer)
• Mac: The installer requires Platypus
• Linux: You need to mvn package the jipipe-installer-linux project

Running JIPipe in an IDE

This repository comes with a project jipipe-launcher that allows you to run and debug JIPipe inside your IDE. You just have to run the main() function inside this project.

Generate JavaDocs (Optional)

mvn javadoc:aggregate

The JavaDoc will be put into the target/site folder.

Troubleshooting

Missing Maven dependencies

Sometimes Maven fails to download certain dependencies if run from CLI. We have experienced that using an IDE can resolve this.

Maven complains about Java version

Only Java 8 is supported. This means that you have to run Maven with Java 8. Other versions will not work.

Nullpointer exception on launching in IDE

Clean and compile Maven. Then compile inside the IDE, again.