[vtkusers] AWT + SWT + Event Loops (was Re: VTK6 and Java Cone Example 5)

[Sean McBride]

On Wed, 14 Aug 2013 14:01:01 -0500, Ric Wright said:

>You're right.  But OTOH, I did build the VTK in XCOde and then pulled up
>the Example/GUI Xcode project (Examples/GUI/Cocoa).  Unfortunately, the
>project doesn't match its own documentation.  It says point the project at
>the VTK/include project.  But there isn't one - there are a couple of
>dozen (I love C++ :-).  That can be resolved (slowly) but the project is
>also looking for all the lib files to be .a (static) libs.  But the VTK
>project builds dylibs (which is the right way, IMO).

I co-wrote that example.  It was meant to illustrate a specific scenario:
 - you already have an Xcode-based Mac Cocoa app
 - you want to make use of the VTK libraries from said app

Given that, it expects some familiarity with Xcode and Cocoa.  The example contains an Xcode project, and it includes some code that calls VTK to display a cone.  I chose static libraries mostly because you don't have to deal with rpaths and install names and embedding the .dylib within the .app.  It's much easier to just add the .a files to the Xcode project and let the linker merge them into your app's executable (it can also do more dead code stripping this way).

VTK can be built as static or dynamic, I don't recall which is default.  Both are well tested.   VTK can also be built using CMake's makefiles generator or Xcode generator.  The Xcode generator is less well tested.  Anyway, how the .a libraries are created is irrelevant from the perspective of the SimpleCocoaVTK example, it just needs to know where they are, and since different users will install them in different places, the example's Xcode projects references the files using Xcode's 'source trees' functionality.

Cheers,

-- 
____________________________________________________________
Sean McBride, B. Eng                 sean at rogue-research.com
Rogue Research                        www.rogue-research.com 
Mac Software Developer              Montréal, Québec, Canada