[Paraview-developers] Adding/writing paraview filters

[Moreland, Kenneth]

I don't think I would phrase it quite as prescriptive as that.  Rather, I consider the plugin mechanism a helpful tool as a ParaView developer.  Even as someone who has write access to the ParaView repository and makes (semi) regular commits, I usually start any new developments as a separate plugin (if possible).  It affords multiple advantages.

It provides a nice clean separation of my code from the rest of the ParaView repository.  It provides a clean separation of my code from the ParaView code, which helps me keep organized.  It is trivial to keep the plugin code in a separate RCS repository so I can manage my fledgling code with looser commit requirements than for the ParaView repository.  I can also build it separately from the rest of ParaView, which save me quite a bit of time.

Plugins also provide a nice staged deployment path.  Even while still in development it is greatly simplified to deploy an early version of my plugin than to deploy a completely modified version of ParaView.  When I feel that the plugin is ready for broader use, I might start by putting keeping it as a plugin and putting it in the ParaView source plugins directory.  This is a nice staging area where I can publish my code to a wider audience without worrying about breaking things for other users.  If the plugin proves reliable and useful to the general users, it is straightforward to integrate the plugin code into ParaView.  However, often the plugin simply stays there.  Often my new code is very useful to a small portion of users, in which case this is a convenient place to deploy the functionality without cluttering the ParaView interface with tools most people will not use.

-Ken


On 10/22/09 1:05 PM, "David Doria" <daviddoria at gmail.com> wrote:

Is this the typical contribution process for Paraview - "Make a plugin
and then if it is good enough to be added to paraview one of the lead
developers will add it"?


   ****      Kenneth Moreland
    ***      Sandia National Laboratories
***********
*** *** ***  email: kmorel at sandia.gov
**  ***  **  phone: (505) 844-8919
    ***      web:   http://www.cs.unm.edu/~kmorel

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