glencoesoftware/bioformats2raw

Delete existing memo files by default?

Closed this issue · 2 comments

If a memo file already exists before the conversion is started, it will be used if it is compatible with the current Bio-Formats version. This can lead to confusion if conversion is being tested with different reader options, since the memo file effectively overrides any options changes.

It might be better to default to deleting the memo file (if it exists) before the first setId call, and add an option to keep the memo file for the rare cases when that is necessary. Memoizer.getMemoFile(String) should make that easy.

Another (complementary?) approach would be to delete the memo file at the end of the process.

Since the primary scope of this utility is to perform a one-off conversion and this file is primarily generated for performance, at least from my side, there is no persistence expectation and it would be completely acceptable to remove it once the computation is complete.

With the caveat that if it exists beforehand, it likely shouldn't be deleted by default afterwards (e.g. in the IDR case)