ITK/Release 4/New Code Contribution Process

This page describes the multiple mechanisms available to contribute code to the ITK Ecosystem.

Level of Contribution

New Classes and Filters

A new class (or filter) must be submitted to the Insight Journal.

1. Submission to the Insight Journal
2. Code Reviewed using the Checklist
3. Posted as Gerrit Patches
4. Peer-reviewed
5. Cdash@home tested
6. Merged

Internal Modules

Internal modules are full fledged modules that are actually intended to be integrated with the ITK git repository and to be distributed as part of ITK.

Examples:

• Video classes
• GPU Support
• Deconvolution

External Modules

External modules are ITK-like modules that cannot be included in ITK because of license issues or should not be included in ITK because of scope and/or specialized use.

Examples:

• Lesion Sizing Toolkit
  • see the Lesion Sizing Toolkit.
• PETSc
  • Numerical Libraries that too large to be included in ITK proper
• FFTW
  • Library distributed under GPL (overriding the ITK's Apache License)

External Layers

Software that presents a different interface to ITK.

Examples:

• SimpleITK
  • see SimpleITK.
• ManagedITK
  • Wrapping for C#

Applications

Applications are programs that often provide a GUI and/or use other toolkits, e.g. VTK.

Examples:

• Volview Plugins
• V3D Plugins

Bug Fixes

Bug fixes are contributions that repair defects reported in the Mantis Bug Tracker or repair daily defects that creep into ITK.

1. Follow the procedure to become an ITK developer.
2. Post as a Gerrit Patch
   1. Gerrit provides a Peer-review mechanism for the patch
   2. Gerrit uses Cdash@home to provide automated testing of patches
3. After Gerrit peer-review, merge the topic.

Wiki Examples

Wiki examples are independent, compilable examples that illustrate ITK concepts. Follow this procedure to add a Wiki example.

NOTE: The examples illustrate existing ITK classes and do not introduce new classes.

Brainstorming suggestion for workflow:

1. Enable users to add Examples in the Wiki
2. Automatically take the new examples and push them as patches to a Gerrit system (with cdash@home testing)
3. After approval: merging it into a Git repository of Examples (separate from the current ITK Git).

ITKv4 A2D2 Contributions

Git Topic Branches

Scenario: the refactoring team has been working on a separate repository and have branches for their work.

Checkout their topic branch

 git checkout MyWorkingBranch

Update their master

 git fetch origin master:master

Merge master into their topic branch

 git merge master

See Status

The following command will show any conflicts resulting from the merge

  git status