[Paraview] changes that affect plugins

[Michael Jackson]

Here are a few of the issues that I have had with migrating a few plugins from ParaView 3.10 to 3.12:

I now use EXTRA_EXTERNAL_PLUGIN_DIRS instead of EXTERNAL_MODULES.

Where I used to have code in my cmake files such as:
# -- Add the Server Manager XML
PARAVIEW_INCLUDE_SERVERMANAGER_RESOURCES( "${H5Vtk_SM_XML}" )
# -- Add the Client side xml
PARAVIEW_INCLUDE_GUI_RESOURCES( "${H5Vtk_Client_XML}" )
# -- Add the wrapped sources
PARAVIEW_INCLUDE_WRAPPED_SOURCES("${H5Vtk_SM_Wrapped_SRCS}")
# -- Add additional sources that are NOT wrapped
PARAVIEW_INCLUDE_SOURCES ("${H5Vtk_SRCS}")

I now have this code:
    ADD_PARAVIEW_PLUGIN ("PVH5VtkPlugin" "1.0"
        SERVER_MANAGER_SOURCES ${H5Vtk_Server_Wrapped_Sources}
        SERVER_MANAGER_XML     ${H5Vtk_SM_XML}
        SERVER_SOURCES         ${H5Vtk_Server_Sources}
        GUI_RESOURCE_FILES     ${H5Vtk_Client_XML}
        REQUIRED_ON_SERVER )

I also have some Custom object panels I designed with QDesigner and I have found I need to add the following to the constructor:

  QMetaObject::connectSlotsByName(this);

in order to get the auto connect of signals/slots connected properly. After those changes the plugins now seem to be working correctly.

The other comment I have is that the original CMake code I had to add a server side "plugin" really just added additional code to one of the PVFilters targets and then I compiled a separate plugin that had the gui code. The first iteration of changes had me creating actual plugins for both the server and client side which seemed even more confusing. After looking through some additional plugins in the ParaView source directory I was able to extract the needed cmake logic to compile the plugin with our without the GUI stuff included based on if ParaView was being compile with Qt support. I think this is the "preferred" way to do this now. If not, can someone with knowledge please comment.

Hope that helps someone in the future.
___________________________________________________________
Mike Jackson                    Principal Software Engineer
BlueQuartz Software                            Dayton, Ohio
mike.jackson at bluequartz.net              www.bluequartz.net

On Oct 17, 2011, at 1:55 PM, Burlen Loring wrote:

> Hi Utkarsh,
> 
> Perhaps I was reading too much into recent posts by Michael Jackson <mike.jackson at bluequartz.net> about 3.12 changes that affected his plugins. I'm a bit defensive on this issue as over the past couple of years I can think of 3 changes that bit me. all showed up at run time and were difficult to debug. I thought it would be good to plan ahead for this release, make a pass through our plugins and catch any potential issues up front. Thanks for the link. Judging from your reply, it sounds like there won't be much to do this time :)
> 
> Burlen
> 
> On 10/17/2011 10:06 AM, Utkarsh Ayachit wrote:
>> Burlen,
>> 
>> What changes are you referring to?
>> The changes to ServerManager have been documented at:
>> http://paraview.org/ParaView3/images/2/24/ParaViewCollaborationChanges.pdf
>> 
>> Reader/filter plugins should be unaffected for the most part.
>> 
>> Utkarsh
>> 
>> On Mon, Oct 17, 2011 at 12:46 PM, Burlen Loring<bloring at lbl.gov>  wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>> 
>>> From a few of the recent posts it sounds like there are potentially
>>> disruptive changes in 3.12 that could affect existing external plugins. It
>>> would be very helpful if these changes were documented on the wiki as a
>>> courtesy to plugin authors/maintainers. Any chance you have such a wiki page
>>> already or would be willing to add one?
>>> 
>>> Burlen
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