[Insight-developers] Any interest in using ExternalProject with ITK?

[Williams, Norman K]

My idea is something like the Slicer 'SuperBuild' -- the basic concept is
to use ExternalProjects to build prerequisite libraries, then build ITK
proper as an ExternalProject.

The reason for doing so is so that you can't really build a library as an
ExternalProject in-line, because any code that includes headers from that
library will confuse the dependency generation, since the headers do not
yet exist at CMake configuration time.

This would simplify -- for example -- my HDF transform file format. In the
current patch, you have to download and build HDF5, and then point
HDF5_DIR at <install-prefix>/share/cmake/hdf-<version>

Other advantages: ExternalProject can download the source before building.
You have control over how the library is configured. You can patch the
library before compiling it.

The downside is that the top-level 'Superbuild' CMakeList.txt would have
to duplicate the config options and variables of the child ITK-build, and
then pass all those flags into the ExternalProject_Add macro.

--
Kent Williams norman-k-williams at uiowa.edu





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