Can't select which update site provides a file

[hinerm]

See http://fiji.sc/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=1024

The Bio-Formats and IMCF update sites both provided a Stitching.jar implementation. As far as I can tell, the Bio-Formats version is always overwritten by the IMCF version, regardless of the order the two sites are enabled.

It would be nice if we could use the update site column to choose which update site to receive a given object from.

[ctrueden]

This would definitely be non-trivial to implement, and I am tentatively against it. The order of update sites defines the order of precedence for files. Right now on the list of update sites wiki page, we keep things in alphabetical order, but we could change that to reflect some sort of precedence.

There will be problems like this, and more, as the number of update sites increases. But addressing them would be a lot of effort—more effort than we have time for. There is always a workaround for these sorts of cases. The worst case scenario is to keep two Fiji installations, one with update site A enabled, and one with update site B enabled, and use each for its ideal purpose.

This sort of case really illustrates the value of a unified "batteries included" distribution like Fiji, and is an argument for a well-maintained, well-curated collection with many tools, rather than making everything hyper-modularized.

[hinerm]

I'm wondering if there's a way we could just Dockerize the server-side of our update sites, as a way of managing update site dependencies (and thus priorities), and giving us a git-style history of changes to each update site..