[vtk-developers] Question on testing gl2ps

[Prabhu Ramachandran]

Hi,

Somewhere down the line the vtkGL2PSExporter's text exporting was
broken.  I've fixed it in CVS.  However, there are no tests for this
class.  The problem is simple, gl2ps produces EPS and you can't read
EPS files via VTK, therefore you can't compare images and make a
useful test.  However, the PIL package (Python Imaging Library)
supports reading EPS files.  I can easily check in a test with
corresponding images that uses PIL to convert the EPS to a VTK-aware
format.

My question is as follows: is this acceptable?  I.e. the test will run
only if PIL is installed (and silently pass otherwise with a warning
message).  

Pros:

  A potentially runnable test case is always worth it.  Even if it is
  hard to run it.

Cons:

 Test won't run without PIL installed.  Would it be possible to
 request all those who build with Python and submit in test reports to
 install PIL?  This is usually pretty straightforward to do.  Linux
 and win32 should have easily available binaries (rpms, debs etc. and
 win32 installers)


Please let me know if this is OK to do.

cheers,
prabhu