[Insight-developers] [Insight-users] INSIGHT JOURNAL: managedITK (ITK 3.8 ?) & Release Schedule

[Bill Hoffman]

Stephen Aylward wrote:
> Hi Dan,
> 
> You just posted on the Users list that ManagedITK doesn't wrap all of
> the spatial objects in ITK.
> 
> Why not?  Is there an incompatibility?
> 

I am going to make some harsh statements at this point....  Sorry Dan...


My guess is spatial objects are not wrapped because it would have to be 
done by hand.  ManagedITK, while it manages to wrap the current ITK, is 
IMO unmaintainable.  It is essentially a hand wrapping of ITK.  There is 
no parsing of the C++ headers.  Each and every method that is wrapped 
by ManagedITK has to be specified in the cmake files for ManagedITK.

Here is an example for a single pair of set/gets on a class:

BEGIN_MANAGED_PROPERTY("LowerThreshold" GETSET)
     SET(MANAGED_PROPERTY_SUMMARY   "Get/set lower threshold value for 
detected e
dges.")
     SET(MANAGED_PROPERTY_TYPE      "itkPixel^")
     SET(MANAGED_PROPERTY_GET_BODY  "return 
itk::ManagedTypes::ToManagedPixel<Nat
iveType::OutputImagePixelType>( m_PointerToNative->GetLowerThreshold() );")
     SET(MANAGED_PROPERTY_SET_BODY 
"m_PointerToNative->SetLowerThreshold( itk::M
anagedTypes::ToNativePixel<NativeType::OutputImagePixelType>( value ) );")
   END_MANAGED_PROPERTY()


I would vote/recommend that ManagedITK not be incorporated into ITK, but 
remain an external project.   If it is incorporated, each time you add a 
method or change a method, then you would also have to find the 
corresponding wrapping file in ManagedITK and make the same change.

We have a complete C++ parser available to us in gccxml, and we should 
be using it.  I would suggest that ManagedITK is a great proof of 
concept, but is not practical in the long run.  The real solution is to 
either use the swig based wrapping for C# or at a minimum use gccxml to 
parse the classes and then generated the CLI class wrapping 
automatically.  ITK is a large complex set of objects, and having to 
maintain the interface in both templated C++, and .cmake configuration 
files for each class wrapped will just be to hard to maintain.

-Bill