FIJI Performance issues after Update mid of July (MacOS, Java 1.6 / 1.8)

[rha...@mpi-cbg.de]

Hi FIJI developers,

some colleagues of mine (and myself as well) had an performance issue starting with a FIJI update in mid of July. After using FIJI for a while (sometimes hours, sometimes just half an hour), menus appeared slower and slower. Sometimes, FIJI completely stopped responding. We all had FIJI running on MacOS (in my case 10.10.3 Yosemite) and had no JDK installed. We furthermore found out, that after the update FIJI was running with Java 1.8 and before the update with Java 1.6.

With the update in mid of July, a new launcher came which appears to be the problem. By removing the new launcher (FIJI.app/Contents/MacOS/ImageJ-macosx) and replacing it with the old one (FIJI.app/Contents/MacOS/ImageJ-macosx.old) everything was fine again. FIJI ran again with Java 1.6 afterwards.

However, with every FIJI-update, the new launcher comes back and may cause the issue again. Do you have a good hint, how to deal with this? At the moment, we replace the launcher anytime, we have the performance issue after updating FIJI. It is not a big deal, but a better solution would be worthwhile. If you need more information about our system configuration, or if I may support you anyhow in solving this issue, just let me know. Furthermore, it would be cool to understand the technical background of what happened here.

Best regards,
Robert

-- 
Robert Haase
Bio-Image informatics, Scientific Computing Facility

Max Planck Institute CBG
Pfotenhauer Str. 108, 01307 Dresden
room: 106 (s)
phone: +49 351 210 2972
fax:   +49 351 210 1689

[Curtis Rueden]

Hi Robert,

> with every FIJI-update, the new launcher comes back and may cause the

> issue again. Do you have a good hint, how to deal with this? At the

> moment, we replace the launcher anytime, we have the performance issue

> after updating FIJI. It is not a big deal, but a better solution would

> be worthwhile.

The situation is temporary, since we plan to stop shipping the ImageJ Launcher soon [1].

But that change will likely make your problem worse, not better. Your performance issues are because (Oracle/OpenJDK) Java 8 has performance issues on OS X compared to (Apple) Java 6. And the new JavaFX-based launcher will likely not support Java 6 anymore.

You can continue to use Java 6 for the moment [2]. But for a variety of reasons [1], ImageJ will eventually stop working with Java 6 completely. The hope is that by the time that happens, Java 8's issues will have become less severe.

> it would be cool to understand the technical background of what

> happened here.

Here is the news post announcing the relevant changes:

  http://imagej.net/2015-06-17_-_Better_behavior_on_OS_X

Regards,

Curtis

[1] http://imagej.net/2015-06-15_-_Major_updates_in_the_works

[2] http://imagej.net/FAQ#How_do_I_set_up_Java_6_on_OS_X.3F

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[Curtis Rueden]

Hi Robert,

> Can you roughly predict, when the new JavaFX launcher will come?

The goal was to have it released by end of August, in time for the ImageJ conference. But at this point it is looking unclear whether we will be able to complete the work in time. But it is still very likely that the switchover will happen before end of 2015.

Regards,

Curtis

On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 4:31 PM, Robert Haase <rha...@mpi-cbg.de> wrote:

Hi Curtis,

thank you for this valuable information. Can you roughly predict, when the new JavaFX launcher will come?

Thanks a lot!
Robert 

Am 8/11/15 um 9:31 PM schrieb Curtis Rueden: