[vtkusers] vtkTkRenderWidget problems with Windows nightly release

[Prabhu Ramachandran]

>>>>> "PS" == P Sherwood <Sherwood> writes:

    PS> Hi All, I have recently attempted to switch to the VTK Nightly
    PS> release on a Windows 2000 laptop (using Python 2.1) and I
    PS> found the following problem when trying to test the
    PS> vtkTkRenderWidget.py code.

[snip]

    PS> The DLL in question does not appear to have been built as part
    PS> of the Nightly release.

Hmm, could it be part of the vtkTcl dlls?  You need to turn on both
Python and Tcl wrapping to build the vtkRenderingPythonTkWidgets.

    PS> Is it possible for whoever supervises the nightly windows
    PS> compilation to figure out (perhaps from Les) how to build the
    PS> extra DLL as part of the routine build and include it in the
    PS> download. Ir maybe there is another workaround?

Yes, this would be great!  Actually, the setup.py script can be used
to build a windows installer (unfortunately I dont use Windows so cant
really test this out).  Basically you'd need to do something like so:

 # Build all of VTK with Python AND Tcl wrapping on.
 $ cd Wrapping/Python
 $ python setup.py bdist_wininst

This should give you a windows installer that should (technically)
install the DLL's and *.py files on a windows machine.  However, this
will NOT install the vtkRenderingPythonTkWidgets.dll.  The reason is
that this DLL MUST go into a directory that is in the PATH.  The other
DLL's do not need to be in the PATH.  So my recommendataion is for the
vtkCore.exe to ship with the vtkRenderingPythonTkWidgets.dll.  This is
because the vtkPython.exe will require you to install the vtkCore.exe
anyway.  Unless of course the standard VTK installers will handle all
this?  I dont know if the above makes sense.  This is what is reqd.

 1. If you want to use the installer produced via distutils'
 bdist_wininst. Then you need to bundle the installer and the
 vtkRenderingPythonTkWidgets.dll in the vtkPython.exe installer and
 then first install the vtkRenderingPythonTkWidgets.dll in PATH
 (probably where the other core VTK*.dlls go) and then run the
 installer produced by distutils.

 2. Ship vtkRenderingPythonTkWidgets.dll with the vtkCore.exe and then
 ship the installer produced by distutils as vtkPython.exe.

    PS> Does anyone know whether I would have the same problem if I
    PS> were to compile the nightly release on windows myseld? I would
    PS> prefer not to tackle it at this stage but it would be useful
    PS> to know if this is an option for the future.

I think this should not be a problem.

cheers,
prabhu