[Insight-developers] PROPOSAL: Change default build type to "Release"

[Marcus D. Hanwell]

Hans,

I never really understood what an empty build type meant, and on MSVC
there is a default. For Titan, VTK, and others I added a default of
Debug to the CMakeLists.txt.

On Sat, Jul 23, 2011 at 12:28 PM, Johnson, Hans J
<hans-johnson at uiowa.edu> wrote:
> ITK developers,
> One of the most common reasons for not using ITK is a perception that it is
> really slow.  In my experience of working with newcomers to ITK, I find that
> their first experience (and often their first year of experience) is with
> the most default build of ITK possible.  It is very common that the first
> impressions of ITK are based on whatever is produced by "mkdir –p ITK-build;
> cmake ../ITK; make".
> Mostly as a marketing tactic to improve initial impressions of ITK, I'd
> suggest that the "mkdir –p ITK-build; cmake ../ITK; make" builds ITK in
> "Release" mode.

Have you considered using Debug as the default for the development
tree, and switching that default to Release when making release
tarballs? This is something I have done, and it seems to have been
well received (or not noticed). So developers get a default they might
expect, and users get one that they might expect.

I would also suggest using -O2 with GCC for release rather than the
default -O3 from CMake release, but that may well be a different
discussion. Just my $0.02 from my experience working on various CMake
based projects (largely from the Linux/Mac perspective).

Marcus