[IGSTK-Developers] PrintSelf

[David Gobbi]

Hi Hee-su,

I can tackle most of these questions.

Hee-su Kim wrote:

> Hi guys,
> There are some issues on PrintSelf.
> Some of igstk classes are derived from ITK but some are from VTK, or
> not derived at all.
> PrintSelf from ITK is a const method but not const in VTK.

Classes derived from ITK must use a const PrintSelf, classes derived
from VTK will have to use a non-const PrintSelf.

> Classes that are not derived have to include all Print-related methods
> and an operator<<.

Classes that aren't derived from either ITK or VTK do not need a
PrintSelf, since the requirement for PrintSelf is really a requirement
that is "inherited" from ITK and VTK.

These classes should define an operator<<() that prints some info that
is useful for identifying the object.

> There are containers as a member variable, should all elements in
> containers be displayed?

In general, no. But if the container will only ever contain a small
number of elements (e.g. less than 10) then it might be useful to print
them. It has to be a judgement call by whoever writes the class, but if
you are ever uncertain, then don't print the all the elements.

As an example, it would be useful for the PrintSelf of Tracker to print
out all the ports and tools, since there are only a few of them.

> I modified source codes for IGSTK but I couldn't compile some files
> with VC6 owing to INTERNAL COMPILER ERRORS so I'm trying to build ITK
> and VTK on .NET2003.

Well, I know that VC6 won't compile VTK or ITK at all unless it has
service pack 5 or higher installed. So if you aren't sure which vc6
service pack you are using, go to www.microsoft.com, click "Downloads",
and search for "Visual Studio 6.0 Service Pack 5."

> I think this error is not related to syntax or linking..
> C:\Insight2\Insight\Code\Common\itkFixedArray.h(63) : fatal error
> C1001: INTERNAL COMPILER ERROR
> (compiler file 'msc1.cpp', line 1794)
> Please choose the Technical Support command on the Visual C++
> Help menu, or open the Technical Support help file for more information

Yes, the original vc6 was too buggy to handle ITK. The service pack
should fix that.

> Are merging properly done with CVS if I and other programmers are
> trying to modify source codes concurrently?

CVS does the merge when you update, not when you commit. So if you try
to commit a file that someone else has modified, then cvs will refuse to
allow you to commit the file until you do a cvs update. When you update,
cvs will try to merge the other persons changes with your own changes,
and the merge will be done to your local copy of the file and not to the
copy in the repository. So you will end up with a local copy of the file
that contains your changes as well as any changes made by other people
since your previous update.

After the update, you should test again to make sure things still work.
You can also go to the "CVS" link from the IGSTK dashboard to see what
changes the other person made to the file.

If everything works after the merge, then you can commit your local copy
of the file to the repository.

Note that sometimes cvs can't do a merge. This happens when you and some
other person have edited exactly the same line of code, for instance. In
this case, cvs will tell you that a "conflict" has occurred and mark the
conflicting parts of the file with ">>>", "===", and "<<<".

- David