[vtkusers] Should the 5.0 branch be used instead of HEAD? (Was: A bug in vtkImageMapToColors?)

[Amy Squillacote]

Hi Kalle,

As a general rule, the HEAD of the CVS tree will change more 
frequently than a release branch (e.g., VTK-5-0).  While we try to 
keep things working properly on the HEAD (through nightly testing, 
etc.), a release will be more stable; fewer people have write access 
to a given release branch, and the intent is that generally the 
changes that are made to such a branch are to fix bugs, not to 
introduce new features.  We encourage people to use stable releases 
of VTK rather than the HEAD of the CVS tree.

- Amy

At 01:33 PM 9/13/2005, Kalle Pahajoki wrote:
>Kalle Pahajoki wrote:
>
>>Hi
>>
>>I've recently noticed a strange behaviour in my software that I've 
>>got the behaviour repeated with the attached piece of code. In 
>>short, the output from vtkImageMapToColors is very odd. Sometimes 
>>some scalars (could be around range 200-255 or so) are mapped to 
>>black. Other times they are colored in weird colors that do not 
>>come from the ctf.
>
>I was too quick to pronounce this working in Linux.The installation 
>I tested it with had been tagged to an older version. With the 
>newest version, it does fail on linux too. Adding the explicit 
>Update() Prabhu suggested didn't help either.
>
>I tracked the problem down to 
>vtkColorTransferFunction::vtkColorTransferFunctionMapData  (that 
>vtkImageMapToColors uses), in particular
>the line:
>
>    const unsigned char *table = self->GetTable(0,255,256);
>
>produces a table where only the first 84 entries are filled.
>
>Browsing the CVS online, vtkColorTransferFunction tagged VTK-5-0 is 
>a version that I know will work correctly. I've never  ran into 
>problems with using the CVS before, so this is a new situation for 
>me. Should I draw the conclusion that it is wiser to use it instead 
>of the HEAD branch? Of course it's no longer so big of an issue 
>since 5.0 is probably up-to-date enough.
>
>Kalle
>
>--
>Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
>Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by
>definition not smart enough to debug it.        -- Brian W. Kerninghan
>
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