Transition to VTK 8.0

[jcfr (Jean Christophe Fillion Robin (Kitware))]

Hi All,

Just to let you know we are working on updating the version of VTK used in Slicer to use the latest VTK version. As soon as a branch is ready for testing, I will follow up here.

It will include the follow steps:

• create branch for testing VTK build

• document breaking change on https://www.slicer.org/wiki/Documentation/Labs/VTK7 (we will probably create a VTK8 page)

• transition MacOSX build from factory.kitware (MacOSX 10.6.8) to factory-south.kitware (MacOSX 10.11.6). Deployment target for Slicer official package will be changed from 10.6 to 10.7 (the minimum required by newer VTK)

• transition Linux build from Ubuntu 10.04 VM running on factory-south.kitware to docker based build running on metroplex.kitware dashboard. (It will most likely use dockcross/manylinux-x64 (or similar image)

VTK 8.0.0-rc1 ready for testing - Kitware Blog

[lassoan (Andras Lasso)]

It would give more time for testing and extension developers for updating if we temporarily make Slicer and extensions compatible with both VTK7 and VTK8 with (using #ifdefs, similarly how we did it for VTK5->VTK6 transition).

[fedorov (Andrey Fedorov)]

“This also means, beginning version 8.0.0, VTK requires a C++11 capable compiler to compile”

@jcfr can you please comment whether C++11 will be enabled for VTK compiled with Slicer?

[jcfr (Jean Christophe Fillion Robin (Kitware))]

@lassoan

compatible with both VTK7 and VTK8 with (using #ifdefs, similarly how we did it for VTK5->VTK6 transition).

Look like we will have a CMake option to choose one or the other.

@fedorov

can you please comment whether C++11 will be enabled for VTK compiled with Slicer?

Will comment later. Depending on what require c++11, we may add this requirement at a later time and patch Slicer/VTK fork.

[jcfr (Jean Christophe Fillion Robin (Kitware))]

@jcfr

Will comment later. Depending on what require c++11, we may add this requirement at a later time and patch Slicer/VTK fork.

Here is an update:

• when building Slicer against Qt4, VTK 7.1 is used and C++98 is selected

• when building Slicer against Qt5, VTK 8 is used and C++11 is selected

[ihnorton (Isaiah Norton)]

Regarding

Load DSI Studio (*.trk.gz) or TrackVis (*.trk) tracks in Slicer

@jcfr When do we plan to switch to c++11? I have trouble building Cleaver on Linux and Mac without c++11, too.

Actually, it wouldn’t be completely crazy to go straight to C++14…

• Windows: in the past, Visual Studio was always lagging, but we will be requiring MSVC19 (Visual Studio 2015) anyway, which supports everything in C++14.

• Mac: Clang has supported everything in C++14 for more than two major releases.

• Linux is the wildcard, because of old clusters. However, they are not any worse off than will be with C++11 – they have to use devtoolset or the equivalent anyway.

@pieper @lassoan

[lassoan (Andras Lasso)]

I would try to be as close to VTK as possible and switch to c++14 shortly after VTK switches.

[lassoan (Andras Lasso)]

I’m wondering if we should create a Slicer 4.8.1 patch release based on the latest trunk version (maybe excluding a few risky changes, if there were any), just before we switch to VTK8. There have been a couple of fixes and improvements that would be good to have in the stable version.

[jcfr (Jean Christophe Fillion Robin (Kitware))]

Hi Slicers,

To streamline the maintenance, support for Slicer_VTK_VERSION_MAJOR=8 has been removed in r26710

What does this mean for existing build tree ?

Three cases:

• Qt4: if you are building against Qt4: no action required.

• Qt5: if you have done a clean build since November 15 (when r26634 was integrated), you are all set.

• Qt5: if you have NOT done a clean build, now is the time to do so. Otherwise, you will get an error message like ``.