[vtkusers] What are the meanings of all VTK configuration parameters?

[Marcus D. Hanwell]

On Tuesday 22 December 2009 17:29:48 David Doria wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 9:20 PM, Francois Bertel
>  <francois.bertel at kitware.com
> 
> > wrote:
> >
> > Hello,
> >
> > All the options have a description. if you use ccmake, there is a line
> > at the end of the terminal displaying the description. If you use
> > cmake-gui, you see the description when you mouse-over the option.
> >
> > There is no such thing as a Ubuntu TDX package, you have to get the
> > SDK from 3D Connexion and on Linux it is rather a complicated step:
> >
> >
> > http://www.cmake.org/Wiki/VTK/3DConnexion_Devices_Support#Install_the_3DC
> >onnexion_SDK
> >
> > Regards
> >
> > On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 8:49 PM, JIA Pei <jp4work at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Hi, all:
> > >
> > > Compilation error message on TDX as follows.
> > > What is TDX for? and where about can I find TDX related package under
> >
> 
> I was curious what TextAnalysis is. The only thing I found was
> http://www.vtk.org/doc/nightly/html/classvtkTextAnalysisUtility.html
> which doesn't seem to actually be anything?
> 
> I agree that often the 1 sentence description is not enough. It tells you
> what it is if you are already familiar with what it is talking about, but
>  if you are not, you are no better off after reading it than before.
> 
> e.g CMAKE_HP_THREADS - use HP threads.
> 
> What are HP threads? When should this be enabled?
> 
> I started this page:
> http://www.cmake.org/Wiki/VTK/Build_parameters
> 
> I started with the short list that was in this initial email, but it
> shouldn't be hard to copy/paste the actual full list out of the cmake
>  files.
> 
> I think we should slowly accumulate good descriptions of the parameters and
> when to use them.
> 
If you use the CMake GUI (cmake-gui) or ccmake and look at the simple view (or 
don't toggle advanced) you will see the options that are exposed to users of 
the package. These are the variables that a user might want to change, along 
with brief descriptions of what they do.

Other variables are marked as advanced, and they can be for a multitude of 
things. The CMake find modules store the locations of headers and libraries in 
them, CMake stores build settings such as HP threads (not sure) and 
CMAKE_USE_WIN32_THREADS - which I am guessing is whether CMake should use 
threads on Windows.

In general you can safely ignore all of the advanced variables, and that is 
why the CMake tools hide them by default. You will find further documentation 
for many of the advanced variables in their find modules. Things like small 
and large data root even contain the CVS checkout commands.

Marcus
-- 
Marcus D. Hanwell, Ph.D.
R&D Engineer, Kitware Inc.
(518) 881-4937