[Insight-developers] API Change breaks backward compatibility

[Bill Lorensen]

Kent,

The problem is, we do not know who in the world is using ITK_Orientation. 
It is very frustrating for someone somewhere in the world to update to a 
new ITK release and have their code not compile. The person who wrote the 
original code may be long gone.

We had this problem with VTK.  For example in GE, I cannot convince 
internal GE folks to use VTK since its API changes so frequently without 
regard to backward compatibility. I know at times a change must be made, 
but such a change must be justified and can only occur after all attempts 
at maintaining backward compatibility have failed.

We are fortunate that SNAP used this API and we caught it before a release.

Bill


At 05:24 PM 9/5/2006, Kent Williams wrote:
>In looking at SNAP, it looks like SNAP uses ITK_CoordinateOrientation to 
>determine an images anatomical orientation. I haven't used SNAP, but I 
>would think SNAP should be using the Direction Cosines instead of the 
>MetaDataDictionary to find an image's orientation.
>
>The other use of ITK_CoordinateOrientation, in the itkVoxBoCUBImageIO.cxx 
>doesn't set the Direction Cosines either.
>
>I can fix SNAP, but the question is should I?  I reckon Paul Yushkevich is 
>on this list, maybe he has an opinion?
>
>Lorensen, William E (GE, Research) wrote:
>
>>Kent,
>>
>>Your recent changes to itkIOCommon.h to deprecate ITK_Orientation violate 
>>our backward compatibility policy. User programs that access that 
>>variable will no longer compile.
>>
>>For example, the SNAP application in InsightApplications will not compile 
>>with these changes.
>>
>>See
>>http://www.insightsoftwareconsortium.org/wiki/index.php/Administration-BackwardCompatibility
>>
>>In particular,
>>
>>http://www.insightsoftwareconsortium.org/wiki/images/4/46/APIChangePolicy.pdf
>>
>>Please revert the changes until we can find a solution that maintains 
>>backward compatibility.
>>
>>Thanks,
>>
>>Bill
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>>
>
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