Re: VTK

[Gert Wollny <gw.fossdev@gmail.com>]

Hello Kyle, 

Am Mittwoch, den 21.03.2018, 22:10 +0100 schrieb Anton Gladky:
> > 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.
I only started packaging vtk with version 6.3, so I don't really know 
what was the reason why these two versions were marked as conflicting,
but I think it had something to do with language bindings that are
pulled in by the -dev package. 

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

That is a very welcome help. I think considering that nothing in Debian
 currently depends on VTK 7 or 8 packages, I would also skip VTK8
altogether.

I think we will need to maintain vtk6 for some time more to keep the
old OpenGL interface available for software that hasn't been ported to
the new OpenGL2 rendering API (one reason being, that these packages
require a OpenGL compatibility context that is not (yet) supported by
mesa 3D). 

One thing that would be nice with the vtk packages is to split the
library it into smaller functional units consisting of lib* and lib*-
dev package (e.g. IO, Rendering, ), so that one must not install all
and everything. Since you are with upstream, you know probably better
where the seams and depenedcies are that one has to take into account. 

In order to make the package as a whole more managable, one might even
think about splitting the source into pieces that can be build
independendly - within the limits of inter-module dependency off course
(and use some superbuild to tie things together for those who want to
build everything like it is done now), but that's probably just a pipe
dream. 

best, 
Gert