[Insight-developers] Test framework

Tue Dec 30 15:21:06 EST 2008

Hans,

I think your view is very developer-oriented, not customer-oriented.
That's OK, I respect your opinion.

As an academic your priorities may be different than those of a
company that must support products on a large number of platforms. I
understand that some day, new algortihms that can only be implemented
with particular c++ features will require an upgrade.

I would be willing to look at the new code you mentioned that can only
be implemented with partial specializtion. In the past, the use of
such code is not necessarily a requirement to implement an algorithm.
However, I do admit, that in the case of the new gdcm, that parial
specialization is so prevalent that partial specialization cannot be
removed. Personally, I think that is unfortunate since reading dicom
files does not necessarily req

On Tue, Dec 30, 2008 at 3:03 PM, Hans Johnson <hans-johnson at uiowa.edu> wrote:
> All,
>
> Removing VS6 & 7 (or changing from cmake 2.4 to 2.6) from future version of
> ITK does not require anyone to change their environment.
>
> ITK 2.0 will still compile with cmake version 1.8 and visual studio 6.  If
> the customer has a working product, it will continue to work.
>
> ITK 3.10 will always compile with vs6 and CMAKE 2.4 now and for all time in
> the future.
>
> ======
>
> There is code that I'd like to contribute, but won't because partial
> specialization is not supported (and I've got no funding to re-write it).
> If it were possible to lower barrier for developers, then there would be
> more willingness to collaborate (add tests, add algorithms, add performance
> improvements).
>
> ======
>
> The previous e-mail only highlights the negative effects of removing VS6/7
> support and does not recognize that there can also be positive effects.
>
> ======  WARNING:  extremely bias statements made below  ======
> Dear ITK volunteer developers,
>
> We thank you for the many hours you have volunteered to make ITK a better
> toolkit for advancing the field of medical image processing.  We recognize
> that you are always looking for ways to improve performance, testing, and
> reliability of the toolkit.
>
> Please keep in mind that your contributions ( algorithms/testing
> methods/performance improvements/...) are only valuable if they conform a
> limited subset of the C++ standard defined by the intersection of supported
> features of any previously supported compilation platform.
>
> There is currently no plan to remove this requirement in the foreseeable
> future, so please re-write your code, hoard it in your own private
> environment, or find some other venue for your improvements.
>
> --For those developers who are heavily invested in using DICOM data sets, we
> will not be upgrading to the GDCM 2.0 library due to the reluctance of it's
> developers to rewrite major parts of that platform to conform to ITK.
> --For those developers who have working algorithms that depend on (existing
> freely available algorithm i.e. BOOST...), you will need to rewrite your
> code because it will not work with ITK.
> --For those developers who've found ways to simplify the burden of testing
> by using existing testing frameworks, please rewrite them .
> --For those developers ...
>
> =============
>
> I realize that this is very biased, and I don't even agree with all the
> statements made, but I thought that someone needed to defend the other side
> of the argument a bit.
>
> Good Day ;)
> Hans
> PS:  I'll still be using an contributing to ITK even with this requirement.
>
>
> On 12/30/08 1:05 PM, "Luis Ibanez" <luis.ibanez at kitware.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>             Brilliant !!  :-)
>>
>>
>>     Now I have to take back what I said
>>     about removing support for VS 6 & 7.
>>
>>
>>
>>         Luis
>>
>>
>>
>> ---------------------
>> Bill Lorensen wrote:
>>> Dear ITK Customer,
>>> As you know, the ITK development community is proud of the high
>>> quality software produced by our distributed community of software
>>> developers. Since ITK's inception in April 2000 we have continued to
>>> add code to test the toolkit every night. The number of tests and
>>> platforms continues to grow.
>>>
>>> Now, as we try to increase the coverage of our testing from 80% of the
>>> code to an even higher percentage, we are considering test frameworks
>>> that will make our job as developers easier. It is possible, that the
>>> test framework we choose will not compile on all of our supported
>>> platforms. But, since this will make our job as developers easier, we
>>> feel that you, as a customer, should follow our lead.
>>>
>>> So, if you use the Microsoft VS6 of VS7 compilers, you will need to
>>> upgrade to a newer version. Yes, we realize that you may need to
>>> upgrade all of your products to a newer compiler. Please notify the
>>> vendors that supply your drivers that they must also update port their
>>> code to a newer compiler version. And your customer, will be more than
>>> happy to upgrade their products. Or, as a Professor running a large
>>> lab or center, please have your new graduate students rebuild all of
>>> your tools with the upgraded compilers.
>>>
>>> We're sorry if we have inconvenienced you, but we have decided that
>>> the requirements of our test environment are very important.  And you
>>> really shouldn't be using old compilers. In fact, be prepared in the
>>> future to upgrade your software whenever we decide that the compiler
>>> you use is out of date.
>>>
>>> You get what you pay for,
>>> Signed by : Some (but not all) ITK Developers
>>>
>>> On Tue, Dec 30, 2008 at 12:48 PM, Blezek, Daniel J.
>>> <Blezek.Daniel at mayo.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi Luis,
>>>>
>>>> A)  No, Google doesn't use CMake as yet.  The snippit of CMake code is
>>>> at the beginning of the GoogleTest section of the Wiki page:
>>>> http://www.itk.org/Wiki/Proposals:Increasing_ITK_Code_Coverage  I didn't
>>>> modify the source, nor need to configure any include files.
>>>>
>>>> B) I missed the part about VS 7.  We have a license for VS 6 and on, but
>>>> no one uses it (except of course Bill?!?).
>>>>
>>>> -dan
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: Luis Ibanez [mailto:luis.ibanez at kitware.com]
>>>> Sent: Tuesday, December 30, 2008 11:16 AM
>>>> To: Blezek, Daniel J.
>>>> Cc: Bill Lorensen; Daniel Blezek; insight-developers at itk.org
>>>> Subject: Re: [Insight-developers] Test framework
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Hi Dan,
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for adding to the Wiki the information on GoogleTest.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Two questions:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> A)  You mention that it
>>>>
>>>>         "trivially compiles using CMake without
>>>>          configuration or modification. "
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>    Is that right ?
>>>>
>>>>    I downloaded version: gtest-1.2.1.tar.gz (released Dec 11)
>>>>    and couldn't find CMakeLists.txt files in it.
>>>>
>>>>    There are standard configure and scons constructs  in the
>>>>    directory...
>>>>
>>>>    Have you written a CMakeLists.txt file for gtest ?
>>>>    If so, could you please share it ? (maybe attach it to
>>>>    the Wiki)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> B) The README file indicates that in order to build it on
>>>>   Windows it requires Visual Studio 7.1 or newer.
>>>>
>>>>   This may actually be a good opportunity for
>>>>   singing the Requiem for Visual Studio 6.0 and 7.0.   :-)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>  Thanks
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>      Luis
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ----------------------
>>>> Blezek, Daniel J. wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Yep, it is cool.  We've been using it extensively and I really like
>>>>
>>>> it.
>>>>
>>>>> On reflection, I'm not sure it will be a drop in replacement for the
>>>>> test routines currently in use, without some messing around with the
>>>>> internals.  The framework manages test discovery and execution and
>>>>> leaves it intentionally opaque.  However, a good strategy might be to
>>>>> leave the existing tests in place and start using a new test
>>>>> framework, i.e., make itkCommonTests3 use the new framework.
>>>>>
>>>>> I documented our experiences with Google Test on the wiki as you
>>>>> suggested:
>>>>> http://www.itk.org/Wiki/Proposals:Increasing_ITK_Code_Coverage#Google_
>>>>> Te
>>>>> st
>>>>>
>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>> -dan
>>>>
>>>
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