[vtk-developers] Notes on VTK modularization

[Brad King]

On 3/25/2012 9:47 PM, Marcus D. Hanwell wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 25, 2012 at 8:14 PM, Pat Marion<pat.marion at kitware.com>  wrote:
>> - If I do a clean configure, then turn off some modules and reconfigure,
>> then I get new Module_* cmake cache variables, why not add them all to the
>> cache on the first pass?
>
> I will look into it.

This is intentional and was a behavior reached after a few iterations
of the interface in ITK.  We don't present options for modules that
are forced on as dependencies of other modules.  The idea is to keep
the number of options presented at one time to a minimum by not showing
options that do not change anything.  We first tried showing everything
but users were confused that their settings seemed to be ignored.

The output of the configuration process includes a detailed report
of why each module is being built.  If a module is built because it
is a dependency of another module then the report says "needed by
$module".  If we add "group" options then many of the per-module
options disappear when groups are enabled and the report just says
"needed by $group".

-Brad