[Insight-users] ITK in Paraview Plugin

Christian Werner christian.werner at rwth-aachen.de
Thu Feb 25 16:36:08 EST 2010 

It works now when I use TARGET_LINK_LIBRARIES, I just did not do it 
correctly (I did not provide the lib that is actually build!). Strange 
though that the compiler did not seem to care.

There is one issue which is still somewhat annoying. Every Paraview-ITK 
filter is now very big (like 7MB). I do not understand why, but that is 
really huuuuge! I tried reducing this by moving all the 
exporter/importer related code from the ImageBox header into the .cxx 
code, but that just made a difference of a view hundred byte.! It didn't 
work this way either...

This is really strange, I was so happy that I was able to make the 
vtkITKImageBox a shared library and thought that would reduce the size 
of the plugins to "normal" levels. In a VTK-only environment these 
filters get as big, by the way.

Maybe if you take a look at the code I sent you, you can make out the 
reason for this? I am not sure if the commutiy is glad about being able 
to easily use ITK Filters in Paraview-Plugins when they are this big...


Best regards,
Christian



Luis Ibanez wrote:
> Hi Christian,
>
>     Thanks for sharing the good news.
>
> You are doing very interesting work,
> it will be really useful to see it described
> in a IJ paper, or a paper in "The Source"
> newsletter.
>
> ---
>
> Regarding LINK_LIBRARIES(): when you
> use this CMake command, you add a list of
> libraries to the link line of all the targets.
>
> If using LINK_LIBRARIES fixed the problem, then
> it might be that there was a target in your project
> for which the ITKCommon library was missing.
>
>
> It will be great to figure this out, because the
> command LINK_LIBRARIES was deprecated
> in CMake 2.6.4, and the recommended command
> to use is TARGET_LINK_LIBRARIES.
>
>
> ...a CMake Guru will be of great help here...
>
> You may want to post the question to the CMake
> users list.
>
>
>      Regards,
>
>
>             Luis
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 4:57 AM, Christian Werner
> <christian.werner at rwth-aachen.de> wrote:
>   
>> Luis, you led me to the right direction. Good news, everything works fine!
>> By chance I found some cmake related postings where there was some problem
>> with the LINK_LIBRARIES variable. I was like "Gee, this variable looks nice!
>> It could replace my TARGET_LINK_LIBRARIES which does not work anyway." And
>> voila, everything goes. This is what I put into my CMakeList that made
>> Paraview execute my cool plugin (a itkFlipImageFilter :)
>>
>> LINK_LIBRARIES( vtkITKImageBox
>>   ITKCommon ITKIO ITKBasicFilters
>> )
>>
>> I know, diving a little bit more into CMake would have helped in the first
>> place, but you just can't study everything before getting your work done.
>>
>> What's a bit strange is that the plugin is very big (7MB). I am afraid that
>> the vtkITKImageBox (which is about that big), or even some ITK stuff is
>> cramped into the filter despite my efforts to link everything dynamically. I
>> will try to find a solution to this.
>>
>>
>> Thanks for your help with everything Luis and best regards,
>> Christian
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Christian Werner wrote:
>>     
>>> I am afraid I did. My vtkITKImageBox was build as a shared library, too
>>> and this was only possible after rebuilding ITK with shared libraries.
>>>
>>> Somehow, if you put that
>>>
>>> ADD_PARAVIEW_PLUGIN(SampleImageFilter "1.0"
>>> SERVER_MANAGER_XML SampleImageFilter.xml
>>> #GUI_RESOURCE_FILES SampleImageFilterGUI.xml
>>> SERVER_MANAGER_SOURCES vtkITKSampleImageFilter.cxx
>>> )
>>>
>>> into your CMakeList, the compiler does not really seem to care about which
>>> libraries it has to compile against. It makes no difference for the
>>> compiling and linking process. I do not even have to mention my
>>> vtkITKImageBox library which is clearly needed by my filter.
>>>
>>> So these libraries oviously have to be available "globally" when paraview
>>> runs. I added the ITK library path to the LD_LIBRARY_PATH, which I think is
>>> the place where ParaView looks for shared libraries but that did not help.
>>>
>>> I asked the guys form ParaView too about that. If everything works fine
>>> and I have the time I could write a paper about my Paraview-ITK Filtering.
>>>
>>> Best regards,
>>> Christian
>>>
>>>
>>> Luis Ibanez wrote:
>>>       
>>>> Hi Christian,
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>  Did you build ITK as a Shared library ?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ---
>>>>
>>>> BTW: This  VERY interesting, you should
>>>> consider writing a paper for the Insight Journal   :-)
>>>>
>>>>           http://www.insight-journal.org
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>     Regards,
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>           Luis
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -------------------------------------------------------
>>>> On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 1:38 PM, Christian Werner
>>>> <christian.werner at rwth-aachen.de> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>         
>>>>> Hello!
>>>>>
>>>>> I wrote a nice VTK filter that incorporates ITK filters. It works fine
>>>>> in a
>>>>> VTK-only environment. I was able to compile it as a ParaView plugin but
>>>>> when
>>>>> I want to use it, I get an error messages which seems to indicate some
>>>>> missing ITK library or something:
>>>>>
>>>>> Attempting to load
>>>>> /home/christian/.paraview-plugins/libSampleImageFilter.so
>>>>>
>>>>>           
>>>>>> Failed to load the shared library.
>>>>>> /home/christian/.paraview-plugins/libSampleImageFilter.so: undefined
>>>>>> symbol:
>>>>>> _ZN3itk11LightObject6DeleteEv
>>>>>>
>>>>>>             
>>>>> I attached my CMakeList.txt. There's no
>>>>>
>>>>> TARGET_LINK_LIBRARIES(
>>>>>  ITKCommon ITKIO
>>>>>  vtkCommon vtkIO
>>>>> )
>>>>>
>>>>> or such in my CMakeList, but that does not seem to be a problem anyway.
>>>>> Everthing is compiled and linked just fine.
>>>>>
>>>>> Anyway, I tried
>>>>>
>>>>> TARGET_LINK_LIBRARIES(   vtkITKImageBox   #my library
>>>>>  ITKBasicFilters
>>>>> )
>>>>>
>>>>> or similar. But that turned into a cmake error:
>>>>>
>>>>> CMake Error at CMakeLists.txt:16 (TARGET_LINK_LIBRARIES):
>>>>>  Cannot specify link libraries for target "vtkITKImageBox" which is not
>>>>>  built by this project.
>>>>>
>>>>> whereas ommitting one of the above libraries, e.g. writing:
>>>>>
>>>>> TARGET_LINK_LIBRARIES(   vtkITKImageBox
>>>>> )
>>>>>
>>>>> works just fine. On the other hand it seems to be totally unnecessary to
>>>>> do
>>>>> anything like that, because always everything compiles just fine, as
>>>>> long as
>>>>> cmake ran succesful. When I compile for VTK-only it won't compile if I
>>>>> do
>>>>> not add my library that I actually need for this filter...
>>>>>
>>>>> What do I have do write into my CMakeList??
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Best regards,
>>>>> Christian
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> # create a paraview plugin containing server manager xml and the server
>>>>> # manager classes to build
>>>>> # this plugin can be loaded on the server side
>>>>>
>>>>> cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.4)
>>>>>
>>>>> PROJECT(vtkITKSampleImageFilter)
>>>>>
>>>>> INCLUDE("/home/christian/programming/pv-plugins/conf.cmake")
>>>>>
>>>>> #find and load ParaView settings
>>>>> FIND_PACKAGE(ParaView REQUIRED)
>>>>> INCLUDE(${PARAVIEW_USE_FILE})
>>>>>
>>>>> # Find ITK & VTK
>>>>> FIND_PACKAGE(ITK REQUIRED)
>>>>> INCLUDE(${ITK_USE_FILE})
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> ADD_PARAVIEW_PLUGIN(SampleImageFilter "1.0"
>>>>>  SERVER_MANAGER_XML SampleImageFilter.xml
>>>>>  #GUI_RESOURCE_FILES SampleImageFilterGUI.xml
>>>>>  SERVER_MANAGER_SOURCES vtkITKSampleImageFilter.cxx
>>>>> )
>>>>>
>>>>> _____________________________________
>>>>> Powered by www.kitware.com
>>>>>
>>>>> Visit other Kitware open-source projects at
>>>>> http://www.kitware.com/opensource/opensource.html
>>>>>
>>>>> Kitware offers ITK Training Courses, for more information visit:
>>>>> http://www.kitware.com/products/protraining.html
>>>>>
>>>>> Please keep messages on-topic and check the ITK FAQ at:
>>>>> http://www.itk.org/Wiki/ITK_FAQ
>>>>>
>>>>> Follow this link to subscribe/unsubscribe:
>>>>> http://www.itk.org/mailman/listinfo/insight-users
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>           
>>> _____________________________________
>>> Powered by www.kitware.com
>>>
>>> Visit other Kitware open-source projects at
>>> http://www.kitware.com/opensource/opensource.html
>>>
>>> Kitware offers ITK Training Courses, for more information visit:
>>> http://www.kitware.com/products/protraining.html
>>>
>>> Please keep messages on-topic and check the ITK FAQ at:
>>> http://www.itk.org/Wiki/ITK_FAQ
>>>
>>> Follow this link to subscribe/unsubscribe:
>>> http://www.itk.org/mailman/listinfo/insight-users
>>>       
>> _____________________________________
>> Powered by www.kitware.com
>>
>> Visit other Kitware open-source projects at
>> http://www.kitware.com/opensource/opensource.html
>>
>> Kitware offers ITK Training Courses, for more information visit:
>> http://www.kitware.com/products/protraining.html
>>
>> Please keep messages on-topic and check the ITK FAQ at:
>> http://www.itk.org/Wiki/ITK_FAQ
>>
>> Follow this link to subscribe/unsubscribe:
>> http://www.itk.org/mailman/listinfo/insight-users
>>
>>

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