VTK/Developers Corner

Dashboard submissions

Running tests locally

To run all of the tests on your modified source tree, simply type <source lang="text"> ctest </source> in your build directory. This will not submit anything to the dashboard, but it is a good "first test" to simply see, locally, if everything works.

Submitting an experimental build to the dashboard

The idea of this type of submission is simply to have a nice way to view the output of all the tests, and to leave "proof" that you indeed tested the code. This is useful if you then commit your code and it breaks someone else's build - you can then claim you did everything you could :). To run this type of submission, simply type <source lang="text"> make Experimental </source> from your build directory.

Creating a 'Nightly' dashboard submission

It is impossible for developers to test code on every operating system, compiler, and configuration. By creating a dashboard submission, you can help them find bugs that could be affecting many users but are transparent to some developers. The idea is to get the latest source code, compile it, and run a battery of tests - reporting any compile, build, and test errors to a system which very neatly arranges the results (http://www.cdash.org/CDash/index.php?project=VTK).

It is recommended to not use the same build you work with daily for you dashboard submission. If there is a problem with the nightly cvs, your code may not compile the next day!

To get started, create a new directory called /home/username/Dashboards/VTK. It does not actually have to be in this exactly directory, but this path will be used throughout this example to make the ideas concrete. cd to your new directory and run these commands to check out an initial version of VTK and data sets used for testing.

Here is an example cmake dashboard file.

You will probably want to submit a dashboard every night, so you can add a cronjob. Run 'crontab -e' and enter the following command <source lang="text"> 0 1 * * * export DISPLAY=:0.0 ; ctest -S /home/username/Dashboards/VTK/dashboard.cmake -V > /home/username/Dashboards/VTK/dashboard.log 2>&1 </source>

This says "at 1:00 AM, every day, every month, run the dashboard tests and log verbose output to dashboard.log". The DISPLAY variable is set to allow the tests that need an X server to complete successfully.

Developers Corner

• Documentation Rules

General Tips

• If you work with Paraview and VTK, the recommended procedure is to use the same source tree for both projects. That is, build Paraview from .../src/Paraview and VTK from .../src/Paraview/VTK.

• You should use vtkGetObjectMacro and vtkCxxSetObjectMacro to set and get member variables that are custom types. This allows VTK's mechanisms to keep the reference count correct by automatically registering and unregistering your objects. An example using a custom class member variable is here.

Pitfalls

• When using the Set*Macro's, you must initialize the variable that is being set in the constructor. The Set*Macro does a check to see if the value has changed before changing it (so that it can update the Modified variable), so if the value is uninitialized, this will cause an error in some memory checking tools (such as valgrind).
• When trying to use an abstract class, such as

<source lang="cpp"> vtkSmartPointer<vtkPointSet> PointSet = vtkSmartPointer<vtkPointSet>::New(); </source> you will see <source lang="text"> error: invalid conversion from 'vtkDataObject*' to 'vtkPointSet*' </source> To fix this, use a subclass instead.

• You are getting

<source lang="text"> Generic Warning: In /home/doriad/src/ParaView3/VTK/Common/vtkDebugLeaks.cxx, line 296 Deleting unknown object: vtkObject </source> and <source lang="text"> vtkDebugLeaks has detected LEAKS! Class "vtkYourClass" has N instances still around. </source>

This could mean one of two things. Either 1) you are actually doing something wrong by trying to manually delete a smart pointer or the equivalent or 2) You have forgotten to add: <source lang="cpp"> vtkCxxRevisionMacro(vtkYourClass, "$Revision: 1.1 $"); </source> to your .cxx file and

<source lang="cpp"> vtkTypeRevisionMacro(vtkYourClass,vtkObject); </source> to your .h file.

You must do this because vtkDebugLeaks uses the VTK factory mechanism to keep track of references.

Examples for Developers

• Simple object class
• Creating a patch
• Applying a patch