Upcoming Slicer 4.8 release

Hi Slicers,

Update: We are currently addressing outstanding issues and cleaning up the issue tracker, once completed (in the two weeks timeframe), we will cut the 4.8 release.

If there are any outstanding issues you would like to see addressed for the release, report them on https://issues.slicer.org/ and reply to this topic. We would also be happy to review patches.

Extensions: We will also do a final call (by email) to extension maintainers so that we integrate PRs or fix their extensions. Without any response, we will either remove the extension from extension index or transfer the GitHub project into the Slicer organization so that it can be maintained by the community. See Slicer extensions: Action required by maintainers

Next steps Following the 4.8 release, we will transition to Qt5 and VTK8 and start working on Slicer 5.0. Transition to python 3 is also planned.

Thanks,
Jc

5 Likes

After discussion today we are thinking we will be able to release on Oct 18!

3 Likes

Hurray! Very glad to hear this!

1 Like

Hi Slicers,

The release is imminent !

Here is a google document where I started to aggregate the ChangeLog for the announcements. I basically went through the ~1000 commit since Slicer 4.6 and grouped them into categories by omitting and/or rephrasing some.

See https://docs.google.com/document/d/1w1yhhEU55fHDzEBSlzP1I1V9jWag_UCiO_4VPXcyHGQ/edit#

Action items

Your help would be appreciated to populate the New Extensions, Improved Extensions and New trainings / tutorials sections.

You are also welcome to help organize the remaining of the document.

Once the document is complete, I will update the wiki.

After the release

Note that, these bullet points will then be added to a CHANGES.md. And following the release, we will incrementally keep track of the changes.

An interesting resource related to ChangeLog. See keepachangelog.com/en/1.0.0/

Update #1

  • Release packages for macOS and Windows have being generated
  • The failure on Linux was an issue in the dashboard script, now fixed in Slicer/DashboardScripts@6caeb06c.
    • CDash entry removed and build restarted using updated dashboard scripts.
  • Wiki pages have been versioned.

Stay tuned !

Notes

Analysis of the Linux failure

As indicated above, there was an error in the dashboard script. While creating the release scripts, I used the wrong one as a template and it was missing:

# This will ensure compiler paths specified using the cache variable are used
# consistently.
set(ENV{CC} "/dev/null")
set(ENV{CXX} "/dev/null")

[...]

set(ADDITIONAL_CMAKECACHE_OPTION "
  CMAKE_C_COMPILER:FILEPATH=/usr/bin/gcc-4.6
  CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER:FILEPATH=/usr/bin/g++-4.6
  [...]
  ")

which led the linux build to use the older compiler g++ 4.4 (available in the PATH) on that platform.

Instead , the script should explicitly use g++ 4.6

See here for the list of available compilers on that build machine: https://www.slicer.org/wiki/Documentation/Nightly/Developers/Factory#factory-south-ubuntu.kitware

Update #2

  • Slicer package generated on all platforms - done
  • Create release branches - done
  • Update Release_Details wiki page -done
  • Update Mantis - done
  • Update CDash - done
  • Update Slicer wiki - done

Remaining:

  • Clean-up older nightly packages
  • Manually sign packages
  • Tag release packages
  • Version NA-MIC data tree
  • Update ExtensionsIndex
  • Update external website
1 Like

Update #3

  • Slicer package generated on all platforms - done
  • Create release branches - done
  • Update Release_Details wiki page -done
  • Update Mantis - done
  • Update CDash - done
  • Update Slicer wiki - done
  • Version NA-MIC data tree - done (associated release script was also tweaked - See Slicer/Slicer#822)
  • Update ExtensionsIndex - done

Doing:

Remaining:

  • Clean-up older nightly packages
  • Manually sign packages
  • Tag release packages
  • Update external website

Update #4

Here it is:

8

Remarks:

  • We will formally announce the release, update social media, etc … after the announcements page and change log are fully updated.

  • Also anticipating a faster release cycle, the ReleaseProcess document has been cleaned up and improved.

Doing:

Remaining:

  • Define Slicer highlights to include in Announcements
  • Update list of New and/or updated tutorials
  • Clean-up older nightly packages

Completed:

  • Slicer package generated on all platforms - done
  • Create release branches - done
  • Update Release_Details wiki page -done
  • Update Mantis - done
  • Update CDash - done
  • Update Slicer wiki - done
  • Version NA-MIC data tree - done
  • Update ExtensionsIndex - done
  • Manually sign packages - done
  • Tag release packages - done
  • Update external website - (wikipedia: done , nitrc: to be done)
2 Likes

Hi @jcfr,

I’ve updated the cask for the stable version:

How to install Slicer 4.8 on macOS using brew ?

So macOS users can do this to install Slicer 4.8:

# Install brew
/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

# Install Slicer
brew cask install slicer
2 Likes

Final and last update #5

Hi Slicers,

Thanks everyone

Completed:

  • Slicer package generated on all platforms - done
  • Create release branches - done
  • Update Release_Details wiki page -done
  • Update Mantis - done
  • Update CDash - done
  • Update Slicer wiki - done
  • Version NA-MIC data tree - done
  • Update ExtensionsIndex - done
  • Manually sign packages - done
  • Tag release packages - done
  • Update external website - (wikipedia: done )
  • Update external website - ( nitrc: done - Thanks @pieper - See here )
  • Tweaking ChangeLog done
  • Update list of New and/or updated tutorials - done (Existing page was cleaned up and is referenced from the release notes)
  • Define Slicer highlights to include in Announcements -done
  • Update Acknowledgments -done
  • Update slicer.org - done
  • Publish blog - done - See here
  • Update macOS cask - done - Thanks @Fernando

Remaining:

  • Clean-up older nightly packages
2 Likes

Nice! :+1:

I added a news item on nitrc with a pointer to the blog post.

1 Like