[vtk-developers] VTK containers are gone; long live VTK conta iners

[Lorensen, William E (Research)]

Will,
I think it will take a couple of weeks to iron out the new stl containers. Just my gut feelig. We've
got several old suns and sgis here that are running vtk. Can we afford to wait?

Also, I assume the old ones will remain around a bit so that users can convert their private classes.

Bill

-----Original Message-----
From: Will Schroeder [mailto:will.schroeder at kitware.com]
Sent: Tuesday, January 07, 2003 12:49 PM
To: Lorensen, William E (Research); 'Prabhu Ramachandran';
vtk-developers
Subject: RE: [vtk-developers] VTK containers are gone; long live VTK
containers


Hi Folks-

Some perspective and background:

The container issue has been an ongoing argument for about a year. We have 
probably spent 100's of hours at Kitware on this topic between implementing 
Andy's containers and arguing about what to do. Once a release is cut 
(i.e., VTK42) then the API it implements must be around for a loong time. 
The problem with Andy's container is that if they are allowed into VTK4.2, 
then they have to be supported for a long time. It has come down to do or 
die because we all felt that containers were absolutely essential to VTK's 
health and usefulness, and we also felt that a final decision on this was 
essential for VTK4.2.

So as Andy described the STL approach is moving ahead, and I believe that 
this is the right decision. The actual changes to VTK are quite small --- 
the number of classes actually using STL right now is very small. What is 
really big is the policy change in favor of STL, not the lines of code 
using STL.

Prabhu I feel your pain. I know there are concerns because of the 
dependencies that your single class introduces. We'll revisit the decision 
and see what it means. And by the way, I have three classes that I am 
holding back on. Right now I am more interested in getting a release than 
getting a new feature or two in. There are so many great things in 4.2 
(like the 3D widgets!) that we've got to get out there ASAP (not to mention 
it has been a year since the last formal release).

Will

At 12:07 PM 1/7/2003 -0500, Lorensen, William E (Research) wrote:
>I assume this won't be in the upcoming release. Correct? I agree with 
>Prabhu that this is a
>substantial change.
>
>I do applaud the move to stl though.
>
>Bill
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Prabhu Ramachandran [mailto:prabhu at aero.iitm.ernet.in]
>Sent: Tuesday, January 07, 2003 12:05 PM
>To: vtk-developers
>Subject: Re: [vtk-developers] VTK containers are gone; long live VTK
>containers
>
>
>hi,
>
> >>>>> "AC" == Andy Cedilnik <andy.cedilnik at kitware.com> writes:
>
>     AC> Hello All, After long time of worrying and wondering about the
>     AC> possible solutions to container problems in VTK, we finally
>     AC> made a decision. VTK will start internally using STL
>     AC> containers. That means so called Andy's containers (vtkVector,
>     AC> vtkHashMap, vtkLinkedList...) are out. Brad modified all the
>     AC> VTK classes that used VTK containers to use STL containers and
>     AC> he did some magic so that they will compile on all platforms.
>
>[snip]
>
>     AC> Please send comments to the list.
>
>Cool.  However, you folks really have me miffed.  Here I am asking to
>get one single class into VTK before 4.2 beta is cut and there you go
>making a pretty big change (IMHO) before the freeze.  Why the double
>standards?
>
>Perhaps I should never ask anything on this list and should simply
>make any change I wish directly to CVS and then tell everyone about it
>once the deed is done.
>
>prabhu
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