[ITK] Improving Remote Module file format

[Bradley Lowekamp]

Matt,

It's not clear to me what is motivating this change. What is the advantage, what could we do that we can't currently do now?

I think there are quite a number of ways modules could be improved. High on the list to to make them usable outside of ITK. This would enable people to develop a module as part of an application, share it on github, then integrated into ITK. As opposed to now, a module it no  useful outside of ITK.

Additionally, we should look at the large term goals. Slicer has done some nice things with the Extension Index. This include having it as a separate repo, where contributions can go to prior stable releases. As a long term goal I'd like to see the Insight Journal function in some ways as the Extension Index.

Brad

On Mar 19, 2014, at 10:09 PM, Matt McCormick <matt.mccormick at kitware.com> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I would like to propose improving the Remote Module file format and
> get some feedback.
> 
> Currently, the file is a short direct call to a CMake function with
> some basic parameters [1].
> 
> Learning from what has been done with the Slicer Extension Index [2],
> I propose we separate the data cleanly, then call the CMake function
> on the data.  The format could be simple INI-style key-value pairs, so
> it can be parsed easily with CMake and other programming languages.
> 
> This would make it easier to know what fields are expected.  It would
> also allow other programming languages to parse the file for the
> purposes of making a web page listing, other clients, etc.
> 
> Fields could be:
> 
>  name
>  description
>  documentation_url
>  repository_url
>  revision
>  contributors
>  status
>  group
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> Thanks,
> Matt
> 
> 
> [1] http://itk.org/gitweb?p=ITK.git;a=blob;f=Modules/Remote/SmoothingRecursiveYvvGaussianFilter.remote.cmake;h=130d13e99c19789f0420b4558e34131cad39f3a4;hb=HEAD
> 
> [2] https://github.com/Slicer/ExtensionsIndex/blob/master/ChangeTracker.s4ext
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