[Debian-med-packaging] Bug#698386: Is there a future for ITKSNAP?

[Paul Yushkevich]

Hi Michael

Sorry that this is causing so much frustration. Unfortunately, ITK and VTK
keep changing fairly rapidly, so code that compiles versus a certain
version no longer compiles against older or later versions.

Here is a table of version compatibility between versions of ITK-SNAP, ITK,
VTK and Qt.
http://www.itksnap.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=Documentation.BuildingITK-SNAP.

Does this help?

Thanks
Paul

On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 1:00 PM, Michael Hanke <mih at debian.org> wrote:

> 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 dragging an outdated version along forever is not an option.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
>
>


-- 
Paul A. Yushkevich, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Penn Image Computing and Science Laboratory
Department of Radiology
University of Pennsylvania
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