[vtk-developers] Guide to implementing kits

[Ben Boeckel]

On Tue, Mar 08, 2016 at 00:15:53 +0000, Adam Rankin wrote:
> Not quite. Specifically the kit part of the module system
> 
> For example:
> vtk_module(vtkCommonCore
>   GROUPS
>     StandAlone
>   PRIVATE_DEPENDS
>     vtksys
>   TEST_DEPENDS
>     vtkTestingCore
>     vtkCommonSystem
>     vtkCommonTransforms
>   KIT
>     vtkCommon
>   )
> 
> Produces projects like:
> vtkCommon
> vtkCommonKitPython
> vtkCommonKitPythonD
> vtkCommonCoreObjects
> 
> and I’m just trying to understand how those get generated, how they
> are populated etc… I have started digging into the vtk CMake
> functions/macros but was hoping someone may have documented the Kit
> (sub?)system.

The idea here was to reduce the number of libraries that VTK generates
(to help minimize disk I/O when loading them). Basically, when
vtk_add_library is called, it sees if kits are enabled and what (if any)
kit the module is part of. It then goes and stores this information for
building the main kit libraries (if kits are enabled). It does this
using add_library(OBJECT) to create objects for each module and then the
kit library actually links all of these together into a library.

What are you looking to use kits for?

--Ben