[vtkusers] Improving VTK packages: some suggestions. [long]

[Will Schroeder]

Hi Folks-

FYI, at Kitware we (Bill Hoffman) have developed  a tool called CMake 
(cross-platform make) that will eventually replace the current vtk build 
process. We are actively using it in our open-source 
segmentation-registration toolkit (the Insight toolkit) that we are 
developing (with 5 other partners) for the National Library of Medicine 
Visible Human Project. It is very easy to use, is very fast, and generates 
MC workspaces/projects and Unix makefiles. Also, this is a funded project 
so it has the necessary support to make it happen..

We have been holding back introducing CMake into the vtk community for a 
couple of reasons. One is because we've got a few more features to add; and 
second the code is heavily templated and uses STL, etc. and requires a 
decent C++ compiler. If anyone is interested we could send documentation 
and the source code, please let me or Bill Hoffman know. The first public 
release of the Insight toolkit will occur late in March of '01, so there 
will be access then as well.

Will


At 01:46 PM 11/24/2000 +0100, Sebastien BARRE wrote:
>At 24/11/2000 10:22, Jan Stifter wrote:
>>if we discuss about packaging, we could do some work in the compiling
>>process too.
>>
>>- configure/make/rpm/deb are nice tools in a unix/linux environment.
>>
>>- how about an install tool, which runs on all platforms (win32 too)?
>>i know of sebastian barre, that he has looked at some very nice tools,
>>which run above perl (correct me if i am wrong) and can generate
>>makefiles for all kind of systems, also for win32, borland and m$-vc
>>compiler.
>>
>>so if we discuss about installation, we should also try to remove the
>>pcmaker and make a unique way of installing vtk.
>
>I'm not sure it's gonna happen soon :)
>
>pcmaker has several drawbacks (especially regarding too large dependencies 
>checking, when  it forces an entire rebuild for some strange reasons or 
>new class addition ), but it does its job. As many people, I'm using 
>custom based (Perl) scripts to build my own VTK classes and avoid pcmaker, 
>but it's a bit too dirty for the moment to be released, and is not Unix 
>oriented.
>
>I've always maintained both automake stuff (for Unix) and VC++ makefile 
>(for win32) to build my own project, but it's getting too time consuming, 
>especially if you plan to automate stuff like CVS, Perl/Python/Tcl API 
>(through swig), documentation (doxygen), regression tests, automatic 
>upload to web sites, etc.
>
>So yes, I've been investigating some build tools, and to my surprise I've 
>been unable to find *one* satisfying free tool that might work out-of-the 
>box right now on both win32 and unix platforms. The most promising is 
>called "cons", it's written in perl, and its Python version has also been 
>chosen by the "Software Carpentry" site to be part of the future 
>build/conf/bug-tracking tools.
>http://software-carpentry.com/
>
>There are plenty of build tools, but not much of them are free, still 
>actively developped, and have been used at production level. I just had a 
>look at tmake, bras, cook, cons. tmake looked OK, but is discontinuated 
>now, and after some exercices it also appeared to exhibit some unpleasant 
>limitations (for my own purposes). I think 'cons' is much more advanced, 
>but it's lacking some win32 support. People are working on that point : 
>I've contacted some of them, and they will incorporate their changes to 
>the main tree ASAP. But I've seen no Borland C++ support for the moment.
>
>Sure, automake/configure and stuff could work on win32, but to my 
>knowledge it still requires Cygwin, and some twicks to force automake to 
>use BC++/VC++ instead of gcc. Automake, libtool and stuff are cool 
>(especially for these that have been using imake in the past :), but it's 
>time (for me) to move to something more practical (thus the Software 
>Carpentry project). I guess Kitware does not want to rely on external 
>packages like Perl being installed on the system, but there is a free 
>tool, called perl2exe that could be used to create a standalone Perl 
>executable (< 900 Ko) if required.