[Insight-developers] multiple shared ITK libraries on windows

[Bill Lorensen]

One dll is OK with me.

On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 8:27 PM, Bill Hoffman <bill.hoffman at kitware.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 6:24 PM, Bill Lorensen <bill.lorensen at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Here's a question.
>>
>> In old ITK, there were 15 shared libraries. Because of vnl
>> limitations, Bill Hoffman says there should only be 8 (my calculation
>> and ITKCommon is the only one that is core ITK). With ITK modular
>> there are potentially 45 (my calculation, not counting tests) shared
>> libs. Supporting shared libs on windows platforms requires special
>> magic.
>>
>> Should we build any shared libs in ITK modular on windows platforms?
>> Is the maintenance burden too high?
>>
>
> Prior to change 419, there was only one shared library ITKCommon in
> ITK on windows. Since that change was in ITKv4, I would hardly call it
> old ITK (maybe 4 month old itk...)....  :)
>
> Anyway, without figuring out how to make vnl shared, I don't think
> that we can safely have more than one dll in ITK.  Dll's are an all or
> nothing type of thing. I think I remember why this was done in the
> first place. The main driving force for the original ITKCommon being
> shared was so that plugins could be done for VolView.  With all static
> ITK, the trouble was that each plugin got its own copy of the modified
> time class static from ITKObject.  This of course totally broke the
> pipeline.  So, I think that we should have one ITK dll as we did in
> the past, and it should be the one that contains the static for
> modified time.  That way plugin type applications can still be created
> against ITK.  I will also investigate making vnl shared, but that
> maybe too hard...
>
> -Bill
>