VTK

[Kyle Edwards <kyle.edwards@kitware.com>]

Hello all,

My name is Kyle, I work at Kitware, Inc. I am working on an official, 
Kitware-supported Ubuntu package for the upcoming VTK 9, and my goal is 
to get it accepted into the Ubuntu Universe repository. (Ideally, I 
would like to get this into mainline Debian as well.) Rather than 
waiting for the release of VTK 9 and patching and packaging it after the 
fact, my goal is to get the necessary changes into upstream before the 9 
release, so that the Debian and Ubuntu packaging will be as easy as 
possible. As part of this effort, I have a few questions for anyone who 
has prior experience with packaging VTK:

1. In general, what were the biggest challenges you faced in packaging VTK?
2. In particular, what was on your "wish list" of changes that you would 
have liked to see in upstream VTK that would have made packaging 
easier?I see a lot of patches in the VTK 6 packaging.
3. There are existing Debian packages for VTK 5 and 6. Was any attempt 
made to package 7 or 8, even if it was never finished?
4. VTK 5 and 6 are marked as "conflicting" with each other. Why is this? 
The libraries and headers are name-mangled to allow multiple versions of 
VTK to coexist. Is there another conflict that we didn't catch? If so, I 
would like to fix it.

Thank you in advance for your help. I look forward to bringing VTK 9 to 
the Debian and Ubuntu science communities.

Kyle