[vtkusers] adding libs (was vtkStreamer and vtkFunctionSet)

[Andy Cedilnik]

Randy,

You are right. Kitware does not verify if MPI works on all platform. But
you have to admit that there is lots of people using VTK without
parallel. But, by adopting HDF file format (or NetCDF), we would have to
make sure that all users of VTK would be able to compile and use it.
This is especially anoying when you say somebody to download CMake, VTK,
and by the way, if you want to compile this, you will need: libHDF,
libNetCDF, libTiff, libJpeg, libPng, libExpat... And not only that, most
vtk classes (especially IO) use fairly standard API's from these
libraries, but still; the libraries change. They change API... By adding
these libraries to VTK, we make sure that not only there is a library,
but there is the right version. 

That said, I think adding HDF and NetCDF is not completely out of the
picture. I suspect better way of adding libraries will have to be
designed. For example, a way to include (or not) tiff if your
application needs it.

			Andy 

On Fri, 2002-06-21 at 10:51, Randy Heiland wrote:
> I don't exactly follow these arguments.  Specifically, I don't see the issue
> with providing a CMake boolean for using HDF.  Just as, when we build VTK w/
> parallel w/ MPI, the user is responsible for building/providing the MPI lib,
> why can't the same be true for HDF (or whatever)?
> 
> Surely Kitware doesn't verify that all flavors of MPI work on all platforms.