[vtk-developers] vtkHyperTreeGridGeometry and vtkDataSetSurfaceFilter

Philippe Pebay philippe.pebay at kitware.com
Wed May 16 05:48:23 EDT 2012


Hello Berk,

> To clarify, CMake options are not supposed to change the contents of
> modules. A CMake option cannot add classes to a modules nor can it extend
> the functionality of a class (such as adding a new type of surface
> extraction filter). This is so that package maintainers can create a set of
> packages that can build on each other but that are independent. In the past,
> this was a problem because options such as VTK_USE_MPI changed the contents
> of kits, making it impossible to have both version (with and without MPI)
> exist as two independent packages due to library name and symbol
> duplication. VTK 6 aims to avoid this. It is still allowed to have option
> that change the behavior of modules in limited ways or select different
> implementations of libraries - such as a system zlib as opposed to built-in
> zlib, or different types of threading libraries.
Understood. Another example is that of the issue of whether R is
linked, or not, for the statistics engines.

For the sake of modularity, it would be nice to have the ability to
remove all references to the HyperTreeGrid-related data set (and for
that matter, also to "AMR", i.e., in VTK parlance, patch-based AMR).
But if I understand well, it is not quite possible at this point as
all types of data sets must be present at least in DataModel (and
their ancillary algorithms in ExecutionModel).

> Or someone may want to build VTK with your surface extraction filters and
> leave out everything else from whatever modules that class is currently in.
I guess this is possible. I have seen stranger things in my life.

> We are trying to give developers the option of picking and choosing among
> VTK classes. Usually the boundary between modules are blurry and we need the
> community's help to move towards a separation that represents most of the
> use-cases out there.
Fair enough. Thanks for the good feedback.

Philippe

-- 
Philippe Pébay, PhD
Director of Visualization and High Performance Computing /
Directeur de la Visualisation et du Calcul Haute Performance
Kitware SAS
26 rue Louis Guérin, 69100 Villeurbanne, France
+33 (0) 6.83.61.55.70 / 4.37.45.04.15
http://www.kitware.fr



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