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

[Miller, James V (Research)]

Have we gotten around the difficulties of having STL containers in DLLs?

I thought there were issues with having multiple DLLs having the 
same instantiation of the certain STL containers (list, deque, map, queue)
due to various static members and Microsoft's "rules" for whose static
members get used when...

I was under the impression that this impacted not only the ability to 
export STL instantiations but also to export classes that had STL 
instantiations as data members.

Also, does this affect the various vtk*Collection classes?



> -----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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> 
> 
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