[Insight-developers] Proposal: ITK Remote Modules

[Matt McCormick]

Hi Brad,

>
> I think that wiki page clears up a lot of my concerns and clarifies how it
> should be used. It looks good.
>
> I like the way you reiterate the usage of the term algorithms, which I think
> will help guide that is should not be used for application like tools.

Great.  I made sure to add the article requirement that you hinted
towards at the TCon, which is an important point.  A sister article
makes a module much more useful.  With URL's for articles associated
with a module readily available, we also will promote a healthy
referencing culture, which is important for both scholarly and funding
purposes.

I see your point about limiting scope, but I don't have many opinions
yet about what should be done there.  A focus on unique algorithms
would be  nice, but I don't know if we want to place restrictions on
topic other than 'it is based on ITK'.  We would need to define
objectively enforceable policies.  I would like see the MincIO module
and PyBuffer modules listed.  A file format reader and bridge to numpy
are not algorithms, but they are important nonetheless.  Since they
depend on the presence of third party libraries, code like this is
often broken when included in the main repository because it does not
get tested.  With this system, where there is at least one nightly
dashboard, quality should improve.

>
> This is likely a different issue, but I think we should put together a
> suggested way to use ITK as an ExternalProject with customized External and
> Remote Modules.
>

Yes, that is a good idea.  Your itkExternalTemplate Github repository
should be linked in there along with the tutorial material Xiaoxiao
has put together.  Experience from SimpleITK can probably direct an
ExternalProject guide, and there are a lot of projects that would like
to use that knowledge.  Theoretically, setting Fetch_<module name>=ON
in an ExternalProject ITK configuration should "just work", but that
needs to be tested.

> Lastly for SimpleITK I have a couple of custom filters and unary functors,
> would this be a candied for a remote module?

Yes, that sounds great.


Thanks,
Matt