[Debian-med-packaging] Is there a future for ITKSNAP?

[Michael Hanke]

Hi,

I am reviving this old thread in order to bring it to an end. Everyone
who has expressed interest and/or frustration in the past is in CC
(incl. the relevant bug).

Over the past month (or rather year) I have repeatedly tried to update
the itksnap package, and today I am giving up. ITK-SNAP has extremely
tight versioned dependencies on ITK and VTK. Making it work with any
current ITK version in Debian seems to require a lucky roll of the dice
(that would not come for me). As of today, neither the current stable
3.2, nor the master branch head compiles in sid. At least for the first
I am pretty sure a version mismatch is the case (see e.g. [1]).
The actual reasons for FTBFS change over time, but the failure rate is
close to 100% for my attempts.

My personal conclusion is that it makes no sense to maintain an itksnap
package independently of ITK.

The package has a popcon score of 241 -- rather solid for a special
interest package of this kind (about half of what ITK3 had in its
prime). It would be a shame to see it go away. On the other hand
dragging an outdated version along forever is not an option.

And to make it very clear: ITK-SNAP is a solid piece of software that I
have enjoyed using (and still do). The problem is solely a ridiculously
complex software interdependency problem, that makes long-term package
maintenance a nightmare.

I have tagged the bug with "help". I see no reason to remove itksnap
from jessie, because this old version does what it was intended to do.
But for the next round we either need to find a better home, or we
should let it go.

Cheers,

Michael

[1] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/itksnap-users/2byPxMTS3Wo



-- 
Michael Hanke
http://mih.voxindeserto.de