The Kitware Blog

VES and Kiwi Open Source Release Now Available!

Aashish Chaudhary — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 10:10:24 -0500

We are pleased to announce the open-source release of VES. We have spent the last few months working hard to create a lightweight platform for building interactive visualizations on mobile platforms by leveraging visualization algorithms offered by VTK and rendering capabilities offered by current mobile hardware.

VES is a standalone, open project and framework for creating visualizations on mobile platforms. The VES framework contains a rendering library built on top of OpenGL ES 2.0, an application framework library for developing interactive visualization applications, and lightweight viewer for iOS, Android, and Linux platforms. VES is optimized for performance and provides an easy-to-use API. For more information on VES, please visit the VES wiki.

We would like to thank everyone who contributed to VES. We are hoping that other developers will come forward and use VES to create some really cool mobile visualizations. Please contact us at ves@public.kitware.com if you have any questions or need help getting started with VES.

References:

What's New in VES: http://www.kitware.com/blog/home/post/185

VES Development in Iterations: http://www.kitware.com/blog/home/user/174

SPIE Medical Imaging Conference: Live demonstrations workshop

Stephen Aylward — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 11:38:57 -0500

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
SPIE Medical Imaging 2012: Live Demonstrations Workshop

Kitware is proud to continue its support of the SPIE Medical Imaging Live Demonstrations Workshop for 2012. The goal of this workshop is to provide a forum for systems and algorithms developers to show off their creations. The intent is for the audience to be inspired to conduct derivative research, for the demonstrators to receive feedback and find new collaborators, and for all to learn about the rapidly evolving field of medical imaging. Last year's workshop attracted well over 100 attendees and hosted multitude of demonstrations and discussions.

The 2012 Live Demonstration Workshop will be held as part of the 2012 SPIE Medical Imaging Conference (February 4 - 9, San Diego, California, USA). The workshop is scheduled to take place on Tuesday, 7 February 2012, 5:00 – 7:00 pm.

This year, the Live Demonstration Workshop has been expanded to encourage participation from all of the conferences that comprise the SPIE Medical Imaging Conference. Previously the workshop featured CAD demonstrations. This year we are encouraging the PACS, Perception, Physics, Visualization, and all other conferences to participate.

This workshop will feature interactive demonstrations that are complementary to the oral and poster presentations of SPIE Medical Imaging. During this event, authors of SPIE MI papers will be hosting samples, systems, and software demonstrations that depict the implementation, operation, and utility of their research.

The workshop will start with a short overview of the participating teams and systems. Next, the audience can interact with the teams during live demonstrations of the systems.

Submitting a demonstration

Those interested in giving a demonstration are invited to send an e-mail to Stephen R. Aylward (stephen.aylward@kitware.com) and Heang-Ping Chan (chanhp@umich.edu) and provide the following information:

Title of the demo
Names and affiliations (name of institute, city, country) of the demonstrators
Short description of the demo, one paragraph minimum. Make sure it clearly describes the technology and application area of the demo. You may cite or include a paper describing the demo.
Optionally, describe the public data used in the development or evaluation of the system. Include a link to the data or to a page that describes how to access that data.

Important Dates

January 20, 2012: Deadline for submitting proposals.

January 25, 2012: Notification of acceptance.

February 2, 2012: Deadline for submitting two summary slides for the opening presentation.

More information

For more information, including instructions on proposing a live demonstration, visit the workshop website at:

http://www.kitware.com/workshops/SPIE_CAD_2012.html

The National Alliance for Medical Image Computing's All-Hands Meeting

Stephen Aylward — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 12:08:05 -0500

Several Kitwareans are attending the National Alliance for Medical Image Computing's (NA-MIC's) All-Hands Meeting in Salt Lake City. At this meeting, we are promoting Slicer 4.0.1, the open-source medical image analysis and visualization platform that we released with other NA-MIC developers last week.

Over 100 attendees are at the NA-MIC meeting and using Slicer4 for traumatic brain injury assessment, image-guided surgery, head and neck radiation therapy planning, atrial fibrillation analysis, and more. Our developments in Qt, Python, and image analysis algorithms have been very well received. For more information on the event, the projects, and the attendees from academia and industry, follow this link.

On-going highlights from the meeting include the following:

Julien Finet and Jean-Christophe Fillion-Robin have done an outstanding job presenting Slicer4 and working with users to created new modules and to apply them to challenging medical imaging problems:

Danielle Pace is supporting and extending our sliding-organ registration research and TubeTK, finding new collaborators, and working with UCLA on traumatic brain injury applications.
Benjamin Long presented his work on automated GUI testing using Qt and Python. The work is derived from the methods developed by the ParaView team.
Stephen Aylward is working on TubeTK and giving a presentation on "NA-MIC Software Processes and Future Plans" to the NA-MIC External Advisory Board and representatives from the NIH. He is also seeking out new collaborations and applications.

Kitware Trains Students for FIRST LEGO Robotics Tournament, WIN

Katie Sharkey — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 15:51:14 -0500

On Saturday, December 10th, more than 120 students from school districts across the New York’s Tech Valley region gathered for the FIRST LEGO® League Robotics Regional Qualifying Tournament at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY. The tournament was organized by the Hudson Valley FIRST® LEGO® League (HVFLL) and sponsored by RPI’s Center for Initiatives in Pre-College Education and Time Warner Cable.

Fourteen teams competed under the Food Factor™ challenge, which required teams to use science and technology to develop ways of making food safer to eat. Teams of up to 10 children and at least one adult coach had to respond to the challenge by programming an autonomous robot to score points on a themed playing field, and developing a solution to a particular food-related problem they’d identified. Topics included safe transportation and preparation of food, exploring pest control, food temperatures, and pollution as it relates to food production and distribution.

Students were provided with a list of tasks (missions) for their robots to perform on September 1st, allowing for considerable preparation time. At the competition, teams were given three, 2.5 minute attempts at the competition table to complete as many missions as possible. They additionally had three presentations followed by question-and-answer sessions with the judges, which required the students to not only describe how their robots were designed and programmed, but also to describe their research project and solution to their food-related problem.

The Tenja Food Fighters from Orenda Elementary School in Clifton Park, led by Naomi Hoffman, Compliance Officer at Kitware, were the tournament champions and will be heading to the New York state-wide Championship tournament in Poughkeepsie on February 25. This win comes after several years of volunteering efforts from Kitware employees Naomi and Bill Hoffman, Chuck Atkins, and Dave Stoup, who have been teaching LEGO robotics after school at Orenda two hours a week for two six-week sessions since 2009.

“I could not be more proud of our team,” said Naomi Hoffman, leader of the Tenja Food Fighters. “It’s important that they’re learning these skills at such a young age. Hopefully it will inspire these kids to go on and make even greater contributions in technology.”

Congratulations to the Tenja Food Fighters and the Kitware folks who participated in the FIRST LEGO® tournament; best of luck at the state competition in February!

Additional Reading:
Students Learn Ins, Outs of Science, Math at FIRST LEGO Tourney at RPI
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Time Warner Cable Set to Host FIRST LEGO® League Robotics Tournament for Local Middle Schools
FIRST LEGO League

Kitware Celebrates the Holidays

Lisa Avila — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 14:59:34 -0500

It is at this time of year more than any other that the growth of Kitware truly makes an impression. I don’t believe there are any photos of the 1998 or 1999 Holiday Parties (not that we were even really calling it that back then), but you can see here a picture of the 2000 get-together (complete with real “crackle” effects since I scanned the picture we’ve had hanging in the Kitware kitchen for maybe a decade...)

In 2000 we had 19 people in attendance, with nine of those being employees and four being children. Organizing the “party” was a matter of making a dinner reservation someplace big enough to fit us all in a private room (yes, we thought we were getting big back then!)

This year was quite a bit different, as you can see below. We started with our celebration in North Carolina on December 3rd, with 42 people in attendance, then wrapped up with our New York party on December 10th with 181 people in attendance. Admittedly 7 people are double-counted in those numbers as some folks from NY (and their families) traveled down to North Carolina to celebrate twice - but still, that is 216 unique party-goers. Although we did not manage a group shot at our North Carolina event, we did all try to squeeze into one photo in New York (with the waiter standing on a chair out the door of the room trying to fit us all in since no one thought to bring a wide-angle lens!)

Planning two parties of this magnitude takes just about a year of preparation - and we all must thank Kitware’s exceptional office management team, Donna, Deb, and Tami, who pulled this off. In addition to reserving the venues and negotiating the menus, they also had to arrange for sitters to keep an eye on the kids, balloon artists and magicians to entertain the kids, AV equipment for the movies and presentations, and of course all the gifts and goodies that go along with a Kitware event.

Below are a few pictures from the New York event that capture a bit of the fun we all had. All of us here at Kitware hope that you enjoyed your holiday season as much as we did, and we look forward to working with you in 2012!

Those of us responsible for the party gifts would like to think that the wonderful expressions shown in this picture were caused by the awesome Kitware espresso mugs with mini blue and green chocolates.		One of the best parts of these company events is getting a chance to see your co-workers' families.

Can you name this mystery Kitware employee?		We may need to hire an additional balloon artist next year as his creations were popular with more than just the children! Those are some mighty big ears you've got there Brian!

Rick and Will covered our accomplishments for the past year, and entertained us with pictures taken at various events and company outings.		Will had the honor this year of announcing two more employees reaching the ten years of employment milestone - congratulations Sébastien and Luis!

Another mystery employee - who knew it was a masquerade party?		Dave claims all those balloons are for his children.

CMake 2.8.7 available for download

David Cole — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 16:32:34 -0500

On behalf of myself, Ken, Bill, Brad, Alex, Zach, Ben and the rest of the CMake team from all around the world, we are pleased to announce that CMake 2.8.7 is now available for download at:

http://www.cmake.org/files/v2.8/?C=M;O=D

It is also available from the usual download links found on the CMake web site:

http://www.cmake.org/cmake/resources/software.html

Some of the notable changes in this release are:

improved Eclipse support
incremental improvements to the AUTOMOC feature added in the previous release
more cryptographic hash implementations (SHA1, SHA224, SHA256, SHA384, SHA512)
file(...) and string(...) command additions for computing hash values
added LINK_PUBLIC and LINK_PRIVATE options to target_link_libraries command
new module: DeployQt4
and, as always, various minor bug fixes

Similar to the previous release, we do not have pre-built binaries for the SunOS anymore. However, now we have two sets of installers for the Mac. The "Darwin" versions are for Mac OSX 10.4 and later, and are "ppc;i386" universal binaries. The "Darwin64" versions are for 10.6 and later, and are "x86_64;i386" universal binaries.

There was a bit of a network connectivity snag in building the binaries for the AIX platform today... Because of this, the tarballs for AIX will not be available until sometime next week.

Following is the complete list of changes in this release. Please try this version of CMake on your projects and report any issues to the list or the bug tracker.

Thanks for using CMake! (and Happy New Year!)

-Dave

Changes in CMake 2.8.7 (since 2.8.7-rc2)
--------------------------------------------
None

Changes in CMake 2.8.7-rc2 (since 2.8.7-rc1)
--------------------------------------------
Alex Neundorf (5):
      automoc: default to strict mode, use CMAKE_AUTOMOC_RELAXED_MODE
      automoc: improved warning message in relaxed mode
      Remove trailing whitespace
      Add comment about one more problem of the C depency scanner.
      fix #12262: dependency scanning for ASM files

Bill Hoffman (1):
      Fix the case where cmake --build failed with two project cmds in one file.

Brad King (11):
      KWSys: Correctly handle empty environment variables
      FortranCInterface: Work around mingw32-make trouble with parens
      Xcode: Create separate rerun dependencies for subprojects (#12616)
      Fix Intel Fortran .vfproj files for VS 10
      HP: Drive shared library linking with compiler front end
      Follow all dependencies of shared library private dependencies
      Do not link private dependent shared libraries on OS X > 10.4
      Avoid clobbering variable 'OUTPUT' in compiler tests (#12628)
      Fix and simplify Fortran test compiler compatibility check
      CTest: Recognize Intel errors without space before colon (#12627)
      Windows-GNU: Remove extra quotes in GNUtoMS rule variable

David Cole (4):
      Release: Increase timeout for slow-testing cygwin build
      Modules: Use "windres" as rc compiler base name for cross-compiles (#12480)
      Tests: Only really run MFC test if we can build MFC apps (#11213)
      FindBoost: Quote possibly empty string argument (#12273)

Eric NOULARD (1):
      CPackRPM fix #0012608 and unoticed related bug

Johan Fänge (1):
      CMake: Fix progress reporting for custom targets (#12441)

Mike McQuaid (2):
      Unset configurations variable when no build type.
      Improve component support and output indentation.

Raphael Kubo da Costa (2):
      Remove the apparently outdated README in Source/QtDialog.
      QtDialog: Set Ctrl+Q as the shortcut for quitting the program.

Tim Gallagher (2):
      FindLAPACK: Correct CMAKE_FIND_LIBRARY_SUFFIXES spelling (#12624)
      FindLAPACK: List thread libs to avoid link errors (#12625)

Valat Sébastien (1):
      CTest: Do not get CDash version without drop site (#12618)

Changes in CMake 2.8.7-rc1 (since 2.8.6)
----------------------------------------
Aaron Ten Clay (1):
      VS: Add support for three new project properties (#12586)

Alex Neundorf (60):
      fix #12392: handle CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER_ARG1 for Eclipse projects
      fix #12262: use the C dependency scanner also for ASM files
      fix #12465: detect the masm compiler ID ("MSVC")
      Silence make on OpenBSD in FindPackageModeTest(#12508)
      Remove trailing whitespace
      Find Ruby on OpenBSD when installed from ports (#12507)
      Eclipse generator: detect Eclipse version
      Detect whether the current Eclipse version supports VirtualFolders
      Eclipse: don't create VirtualFolders if not supported
      Eclipse: better message when Eclipse version could not be determined
      automoc:run moc on the header if the source file contains include "foo.moc"
      Add copyright notices
      automoc: always run moc on the cpp file if there is a foo.moc included
      Eclipse: add virtual folder for each target
      Eclipse: move code for generating links to projects into separate function
      Eclipse: move code for generating links to targets into separate function
      Eclipse: add Build and Clean targets to targets
      Eclipse: detect number of CPUs, set CMAKE_ECLIPSE_MAKE_ARGUMENTS accordigly
      Eclipse: fix #12417, don't create wrong src pathentries
      FindLibXslt: also search libexslt and xsltproc
      don't crash in automoc with empty COMPILE_DEFINITIONS property
      Automoc: fix the fix, need to use std::string, not just char* pointer
      automoc: fix #12541, support moc options
      add documentation for the AUTOMOC_MOC_OPTIONS property
      Eclipse: warn if CMAKE_BINARY_DIR is subdir of CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR
      Eclipse: make targets work from any directory
      Eclipse: quote the build dir (to make it work with spaces)
      make automoc work when using ccmake via PATH (#12551)
      Strip trailing whitespace
      -make GETTEXT_PROCESS_PO_FILES() work with files with multiple dots
      FindGettext: two more fixes for files with multiple dots
      FindPNG: provide PNG_INCLUDE_DIRS, as the readme.txt says (#11312)
      Eclipse: create links to subprojects also in the source-project (#12579)
      Eclipse: use new variable CMAKE_ECLIPSE_GENERATE_SOURCE_PROJECT
      install(EXPORT): Enforce existence of imported target files
      Remove trailing whitespace
      cmake-gui: add completion for the names when adding cache entries
      automoc: stricter checking for what file is included
      automoc: rework the checking for the matching header, to give better warnings
      automoc: handle the case when the developer includes the wrong mocfile
      automoc: add more test cases
      automoc: improved diagnostics
      automoc: minor optimization
      automoc: another runtime optimization
      Automoc: modified handling of included .moc files
      automoc: add a test for including both abc.moc and moc_abc.cpp
      automoc: add test for including the moc file from another header
      automoc: add test for including a moc_abc_p.cpp file
      automoc: move some code from the big parsing loop into separate functions
      automoc: add special handling for including basename_p.moc, with test
      automoc: add extra check whether the header contains Q_PRIVATE_SLOT
      automoc: some more linebreaks for the warnings for better readability
      automoc: fix handling of included _p.moc files
      automoc: move the code for finding headers into separate function
      automoc: add a StrictParseCppFile(), which is only qmake-compatible
      automoc: also accept other files when .moc is included in non-strict mode
      automoc: accept even more .moc files in non-strict mode
      automoc: add variable CMAKE_AUTOMOC_STRICT_MODE, to enable strict parsing
      automoc: fix line length
      automoc: add documentation for CMAKE_AUTOMOC_STRICT_MODE

Alexey Ozeritsky (1):
      FindLAPACK: Fix linking to static LAPACK on Unix (#12477)

Bernhard Walle (1):
      Source/cmCTest.cxx: Add missing newline (#12538)

Brad King (65):
      Refactor find_* command final path list computation
      Constify XCode generator getters to match cmGlobalGenerator
      Fix line-too-long style violations
      KWSys: Fix Doxygen warnings
      Add pre-commit|commit-msg|prepare-commit-msg hook placeholders
      pre-commit: Reject changes to KWSys through Git
      Fix CTest.UpdateSVN with Subversion 1.7 (#12535)
      Teach CTest.UpdateSVN to detect svn add --depth before using it
      KWSys: Address Intel compiler remarks
      Fix linking to OS X Frameworks named with spaces (#12550)
      Watcom: Use shortpath to CMake if full path has parens (#12548)
      KWSys: Remove trailing whitespace in SystemTools.cxx
      KWSys: Fix wrong spelling of __INTEL_COMPILER
      Update main Copyright.txt year range for 2011
      KWIML: The Kitware Information Macro Library
      Configure KWIML inside CMake as cmIML
      KWIML: Avoid redefining _CRT_SECURE_NO_DEPRECATE in test.h
      KWIML: Suppress printf/scanf format warnings in test
      KWIML: No INT_SCN*8 on SunPro compiler
      KWIML: No INT_SCN*8 on Intel for Windows
      KWIML: Create test output dir for Xcode
      Order VS local generator Version ivar values consistently
      Enumerate VS11 version explicitly in local generators
      KWIML: Test header inclusion after system headers
      KWIML: Ignore _LONGLONG on MS compiler
      KWIML: Teach ABI.h about PGI compiler
      KWIML: Avoid MSVC linker warning about not using C++ runtime
      Factor Compute(File|String)MD5 into cmCryptoHash helper
      Add file(MD5) command to compute cryptographic hash
      Import sha2 implementation 1.0 from Aaron D. Gifford
      Import sha2 implementation 1.1 from Aaron D. Gifford
      sha2: Use KWIML fixed-size integer types and endian-ness
      sha2: Build as part of CMakeLib
      Add file(SHA*) commands to compute cryptographic hashes
      sha2: Use "static const" instead of "const static" declarations
      cmCryptoHash: Provide factory "New" method
      Add string(MD5) and string(SHA*) commands to compute hashes
      sha2: Use KWIML fixed-size integer constant macros
      sha2: Suppress Borland warnings in third-party code
      Disable file() and string() hash commands during bootstrap
      sha2: Wrap long lines in third-party declarations
      Fix CMake.File hash test for CRLF checkouts
      cmCryptoHash: Add virtual destructor
      sha2: Cast safe conversions to smaller integer types
      sha2: Suppress -Wcast-align warning from Clang
      sha2: Zero entire SHA_CTX structure during cleanup
      target_link_libraries: Add missing space in documentation
      target_link_libraries: Simplify argument processing state tests
      install(EXPORT): Improve target import failure message format
      Remove trailing whitespace from cmLocalGenerator
      bootstrap: Include cmNewLineStyle in build
      cmNewLineStyle: Remove trailing comma in enum
      cmNewLineStyle: Use cmStandardIncludes.h
      Provide std::ios_base typedef on GCC < 3
      FindZLIB: Search under ZLIB_ROOT if it is set
      Factor out target location undefined behavior helper macro
      export(): Document undefined behavior of location properties
      Recognize the Tiny C Compiler (#12605)
      TinyCC: Add compiler info for shared libs on Linux (#12605)
      Fortran: Detect pointer size in gfortran on MinGW
      Load platform files that need to know the ABI when possible
      Factor makefile generator link rule lookup into helper function
      Add CMAKE_GNUtoMS option to convert GNU .dll.a to MS .lib
      Test CMAKE_GNUtoMS option in ExportImport on MinGW and MSys
      cmTarget: Create helper method for versioned library names

Clinton Stimpson (2):
      Fix XML safety issue with adding preprocessor defines in CodeBlocks project.
      Qt4: Fix dependencies of QtDeclartive.

Dan Kegel (1):
      Modules: Add XRes to FindX11.cmake

David Cole (17):
      Begin post-2.8.6 development
      CTest: Fix crash when variables are not defined
      VS11: Fix comment generated at the top of *.sln files
      CTest: Add COVERAGE_EXTRA_FLAGS cache variable (#12490)
      CTest: Clear custom vectors before populating (#12383)
      Tests: Add the MFC test (#11213)
      Tests: Avoid MFC test automatically for VCExpress builds (#11213)
      Tests: Fix MFC test w/ Make-based generators (#11213)
      Tests: Fix MFC test for old vs6 dashboards (#11213)
      Tests: Avoid MFC test automatically for Watcom WMake builds (#11213)
      Tests: Fix MFC test to work with VS 10 and later (#11213)
      VS10: Use expected values for UseOfMfc (#11213)
      Tests: Add environment logging to the MFC test (#11213)
      VS11: Update InstallRequiredSystemLibraries.cmake for VS11 (#11213)
      Tests: Nudge MFC test to pass on VS 6 dashboards (#11213)
      VS: Use "call " keyword with .cmd and .bat file custom commands (#12445)
      CTest: Disallow problem chars in build and site names (#11792)

Eric NOULARD (3):
      CPackRPM support component specific variables for spec files
      Fix old reference to CMAKE_MAKE_PROGRAM inside CMAKE_BUILD_TOOL doc.
      CPackRPM fix #12556 and enhance documentation

James Bigler (6):
      Added support for CUDA_PATH which is present in the CUDA toolkit 3.2 onward.
      Reset dependency file list when a dependency disappeared.
      Add work around for CUDA in UNC paths.
      Fixes for handling quotes in args and other places (Fix Bug 11726 and 12099).
      Make CUDA working directory unique for each target.
      Miscellaneous fixes.

Jean-Christophe Fillion-Robin (1):
      CTest: Look for CTestConfig.cmake in build dir first, then source dir

Johan Bjork (1):
      Xcode: Avoid spewing the environment on every script run (#12522)

Mateusz Loskot (1):
      FindBoost: Use MSVC11 to find Boost on Windows (#12568)

Mathieu Malaterre (1):
      TinyCC: Add default compilation flags (#12605)

Mike McQuaid (6):
      Add QT_LIBRARIES_PLUGINS variable to UseQt4.
      Add DeployQt4 module.
      Match fixup_qt4_executable with documentation.
      Don't resolve directories; are never relative.
      Check plugin variables are defined before warning.
      Check QtCore without warning.

Nicolas Despres (17):
      Refactor TargetTypeNames.
      Add const versions of some getters.
      Constify many getters of cmGlobalGenerator.
      Remove trailing white-spaces.
      Fix typo.
      Doxygen: Improve code documentation.
      Doxygen: Generate call graph and relationships.
      Doxygen: Fix warnings.
      Doxygen: Remove dependency on VTK when building doxygen.
      Usage: Document -j|--parallel option in help message.
      Usage: Document all options printing usage information.
      Usage: Document all options printing the version number.
      Usage: Print help, version and copyright options in usage information.
      Usage: Add missing exepath argument in get_prerequisites documentation.
      ccmake: Align 'g' and 'q' key instructions.
      ccmake: Document '/' key.
      ccmake: Factor toggle key help instructions.

Niels Dekker (1):
      Fix CMAKE_VERBOSE_MAKEFILE for VS10 vcxproj files (#12504)

Ondrej Balaz (1):
      FindBISON: Fix bison++ version parsing to avoid "Offending entry"

Peter Collingbourne (4):
      Make cmLocalGenerator::ConvertToLinkReference virtual
      Introduce a cmLocalGenerator::ConvertToIncludeReference function
      Introduce a cmGlobalGenerator::ResolveLanguageCompiler function
      Fix configuration-dependent flag lookup in cmLocalGenerator::GetTargetFlags

Peter Kuemmel (1):
      Add NEWLINE_STYLE option to configure_file (#3957)

Philip Lowman (1):
      FindProtoBuf: Documented limitation of the public macro

Pierre-Francois Laquerre (1):
      Fix path quoting in Qt4 macros

Robert Dailey (1):
      VS: Add VS_SCC_AUXPATH target property (#12549)

Rolf Eike Beer (4):
      libarchive: fix typo in CheckFileOffsetBits.cmake
      Tell people that link_directories() is not what they are searching for
      FindBISON: Fix matching output of "bison --version"
      Tests: ExternalProject: Remove unnecessary 'svn --version' call

Stephen Kelly (13):
      Add features from KDE for arguments to qdbusxml2cpp.
      Remove unused define.
      Build each library only once instead of once for each test.
      Initialize LINK_INTERFACE_LIBRARIES target property with a variable
      Also run moc automatically with Qt5.
      Fix typo.
      Don't assume the existence of QT_MAJOR_VERSION.
      Update comments and method names to not be Qt4 specific.
      Fix style.
      target_link_libraries: Trim trailing whitespace
      target_link_libraries: Add LINK_(PUBLIC|PRIVATE) options
      moc is now part of the Qt5Core module
      Add a test case for the use of Q_PRIVATE_SLOT.

Open Source Funding Streams

Will Schroeder — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 08:43:00 -0500

During the holiday season it's natural to consider giving back and reflecting on what we've accomplished. According to ohloh.net the open source community has done an amazing job on both counts. For example, a partial tabulation of some open source projects related to medical image analysis yields a total of over $350 million and over 12 million lines of code, the result of years of hard work .

WOW!

Do I believe these numbers? Absolutely not. There are many obvious problems: COCOMO cost estimation is notoriously inaccurate; many of our OS developers are way more productive than the model assumes; line counts are off; and the cost of a developer ($100K/year assumed) varies widely (probably factors of 0.5 to 3 depending on the organization). On the other hand, many software tools are not included, for example ParaView is often used in medical applications, so this is far from a complete accounting. It would be really fun to do a financial roll up of open source tools being used, in say medical research, and compare them to investments made by funding agencies, research organizations and other customers. I have a pretty strong suspicion that a dollar invested pays off very handsomely.

Whatever the real numbers, I do believe they are impressively large, hence implicit in these figures is that many of these projects represent mammoth combinations of money, vision and concerted effort over decades (the first line of VTK code was written in late 1993) to create ongoing funding streams. I attribute much of this success story to the Unsung Heroes of Open Source, those champions with a clear Collaborative Vision of the future who are willing to support projects over the long haul. However, while having Champions and articulating Vision are essential to success of an open source project, to manifest portfolios of this size it's important to understand the creative energy that goes into supporting them over the long term. Thus in this blog post I'd like to describe a few of the many approaches our communities have used to create successful funding streams, as well as reflecting on the challenges that the various approaches present. Hopefully in the coming years we can do more of the same and approach the billion dollar mark.

Community Efforts: The classic model of open source development as being volunteer driven is giving away to more sophisticated approaches which combine volunteers, students, academics, research labs, non-profits and commercial firms. In our communities we leverage these partnerships in novel ways by hosting hackfests to bring together developers and users in concentrated programming events; teach college-level open source courses and harness the energy of students; build open source research programs such as NA-MIC which sponsor major Project Weeks (summer and winter) to address algorithm and software development needs; get the word out at important conferences (Supercomputing, VisWeek, OSCON for example); participate in broader community events like Google summer of code; and sponsor community-building webinars. The challenge here is to establish effective governance and communication channels in order to effectively weave these efforts together.

Research Programs: There is an avalanche of formal support for Open Access, Open Data and Open Source research initiatives. Despite inherent resistance to some in the scientific community to sharing (for a discussion see the excellent book Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science), the Unsung Heroes who manage the research funding stream see the bigger picture: Open Science requires funding steams dedicated to making the results of research open. Such research programs represent a significant change in the way R&D is performed, positively impacting many open source communities with funding, and explicitly prioritizing agile innovation and reproducible science as a broader public good. There is also a pragmatic focus to many programs which aim to create open computational infrastructures that spawn competitive commercial activities to create jobs and build businesses.

SBIR/STTR: Businesses like Kitware that engage in R&D may tap the SBIR/STTR program. The Small Business Innovation Research program is a highly competitive program that encourages US small businesses to engage in Federal R&D with the potential for commercialization. While the program is extremely competitive, it has enabled Kitware to develop core infrastructure in several of our open source projects. In the past the program emphasis has been squarely focused on business models that create and commercialize IP (patents, licensing, etc.), and the open source service model was viewed with skepticism. This is now changing as successful open source companies emerge, agile innovation is recognized as a competitive advantage, and broad scientific impacts are made. Other countries or groups offer similar commercially-oriented R&D programs too (and which our foreign offices participate in).

Commercial Work: Many commercial forms work in the background (often choosing anonymity for competitive reasons) creating systems using open source software, and then contribute back everything from bug fixes to small enhancements to major chunks of code. In some cases our work with commercial entities is small potato-stuff like support contracts, and sometimes major technology-integration initiatives valued at millions of dollars. We find that permissive licenses such as BSD work best, since various flavors of GPL (and other reciprocal licenses) are so complex and onerous that commercial firms stay away from them. We've found that even receiving partial contributions from commercial firms (who admittedly often hold back code when not required to by license) produces more code contributed, and more overall support to our communities, than zero code and support due to scary licensing provisions.

Engaging with Non-Profits. Many non-profits have a social mission and are happy to support open source communities (ironically many universities resist open approaches, employing active patent and licensing offices). While non-profits may not contribute direct funding (although some foundations are huge and directly do so), the exposure to the community can be important, not to mention the driving technical challenges. For example, the Give-A-Scan project developed by the Lung Cancer Alliance and Kitware, uses many open source tools to create an archive of images and clinical data from donations by lung cancer patients. We have received favorable press which goes a long way to emphasizing our commitment to creating shared value.

Government. Aside from scientific research programs, governments are recognizing the value proposition of using open source software. Licensing issues, which are extremely difficult to manage across large organization are greatly reduced, and favorable competitive situations are established (firms compete on who services an open source system, and there is little if any vendor lock-in). Moreover, if the government desires the power to change and adapt the underlying software (for example for defense purposes) open source tools are essential. Some of these projects can be huge and the politics is challenging, for example Kitware is part of the OSEHRA team to improve and maintain EHR information systems including the VA's successful Vista system. Despite the challenge of large government projects, such programs can provide significant support to the open source community.

Creating and maintaining effective, long-term funding streams is critical to the success of large scale open source projects. While we've done an amazing job of it thus far, changing the way the word innovates and shares will require that we continue to push the frontiers of creative business development, as well as creating the best possible technology for our customers and collaborators.

CMake 2.8.7-rc2 ready for testing!

David Cole — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 20:31:59 -0500

The CMake 2.8.7 release candidate stream continues! You can find the source and binaries here:

http://www.cmake.org/files/v2.8/?C=M;O=D

This will become the final build of CMake 2.8.7 next Wednesday unless somebody finds and reports a showstopping (crasher, serious behavioral regression) issue between now and then.

Some of the notable changes in this release are:

improved Eclipse support
incremental improvements to the AUTOMOC feature added in the previous release
more cryptographic hash implementations (SHA1, SHA224, SHA256, SHA384, SHA512)
file(...) and string(...) command additions for computing hash values
added LINK_PUBLIC and LINK_PRIVATE options to target_link_libraries command
and, as always, various minor bug fixes

Changes in CMake 2.8.7-rc2 (since 2.8.7-rc1)
--------------------------------------------
Alex Neundorf (5):
      automoc: default to strict mode, use CMAKE_AUTOMOC_RELAXED_MODE
      automoc: improved warning message in relaxed mode
      Remove trailing whitespace
      Add comment about one more problem of the C depency scanner.
      fix #12262: dependency scanning for ASM files

Bill Hoffman (1):
      Fix the case where cmake --build failed with two project cmds in one file.

Brad King (11):
      KWSys: Correctly handle empty environment variables
      FortranCInterface: Work around mingw32-make trouble with parens
      Xcode: Create separate rerun dependencies for subprojects (#12616)
      Fix Intel Fortran .vfproj files for VS 10
      HP: Drive shared library linking with compiler front end
      Follow all dependencies of shared library private dependencies
      Do not link private dependent shared libraries on OS X > 10.4
      Avoid clobbering variable 'OUTPUT' in compiler tests (#12628)
      Fix and simplify Fortran test compiler compatibility check
      CTest: Recognize Intel errors without space before colon (#12627)
      Windows-GNU: Remove extra quotes in GNUtoMS rule variable

David Cole (4):
      Release: Increase timeout for slow-testing cygwin build
      Modules: Use "windres" as rc compiler base name for cross-compiles (#12480)
      Tests: Only really run MFC test if we can build MFC apps (#11213)
      FindBoost: Quote possibly empty string argument (#12273)

Eric NOULARD (1):
      CPackRPM fix #0012608 and unoticed related bug

Johan Fänge (1):
      CMake: Fix progress reporting for custom targets (#12441)

Mike McQuaid (2):
      Unset configurations variable when no build type.
      Improve component support and output indentation.

Raphael Kubo da Costa (2):
      Remove the apparently outdated README in Source/QtDialog.
      QtDialog: Set Ctrl+Q as the shortcut for quitting the program.

Tim Gallagher (2):
      FindLAPACK: Correct CMAKE_FIND_LIBRARY_SUFFIXES spelling (#12624)
      FindLAPACK: List thread libs to avoid link errors (#12625)

Valat Sébastien (1):
      CTest: Do not get CDash version without drop site (#12618)

The Visualization of a Marathon

Bill Hoffman — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 16:44:27 -0500

CMake 2.8.7-rc1 ready for testing!

David Cole — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 16:39:26 -0500

I am happy to announce that CMake 2.8.7 has entered the release candidate stage!

You can find the source and binaries here:

http://www.cmake.org/files/v2.8/?C=M;O=D

Some of the notable changes in this release are:

improved Eclipse support
incremental improvements to the AUTOMOC feature added in the previous release
more cryptographic hash implementations (SHA1, SHA224, SHA256, SHA384, SHA512)
file(...) and string(...) command additions for computing hash values
added LINK_PUBLIC and LINK_PRIVATE options to target_link_libraries command
and, as always, various minor bug fixes

Following is the complete list of changes in this release. Please try this version of CMake on your projects and report any issues to the list or the bug tracker.

Happy building!

-Dave

Changes in CMake 2.8.7-rc1 (since 2.8.6)
----------------------------------------
Aaron Ten Clay (1):
      VS: Add support for three new project properties (#12586)

Alex Neundorf (60):
      fix #12392: handle CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER_ARG1 for Eclipse projects
      fix #12262: use the C dependency scanner also for ASM files
      fix #12465: detect the masm compiler ID ("MSVC")
      Silence make on OpenBSD in FindPackageModeTest(#12508)
      Remove trailing whitespace
      Find Ruby on OpenBSD when installed from ports (#12507)
      Eclipse generator: detect Eclipse version
      Detect whether the current Eclipse version supports VirtualFolders
      Eclipse: don't create VirtualFolders if not supported
      Eclipse: better message when Eclipse version could not be determined
      automoc:run moc on the header if the source file contains include "foo.moc"
      Add copyright notices
      automoc: always run moc on the cpp file if there is a foo.moc included
      Eclipse: add virtual folder for each target
      Eclipse: move code for generating links to projects into separate function
      Eclipse: move code for generating links to targets into separate function
      Eclipse: add Build and Clean targets to targets
      Eclipse: detect number of CPUs, set CMAKE_ECLIPSE_MAKE_ARGUMENTS accordigly
      Eclipse: fix #12417, don't create wrong src pathentries
      FindLibXslt: also search libexslt and xsltproc
      don't crash in automoc with empty COMPILE_DEFINITIONS property
      Automoc: fix the fix, need to use std::string, not just char* pointer
      automoc: fix #12541, support moc options
      add documentation for the AUTOMOC_MOC_OPTIONS property
      Eclipse: warn if CMAKE_BINARY_DIR is subdir of CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR
      Eclipse: make targets work from any directory
      Eclipse: quote the build dir (to make it work with spaces)
      make automoc work when using ccmake via PATH (#12551)
      Strip trailing whitespace
      -make GETTEXT_PROCESS_PO_FILES() work with files with multiple dots
      FindGettext: two more fixes for files with multiple dots
      FindPNG: provide PNG_INCLUDE_DIRS, as the readme.txt says (#11312)
      Eclipse: create links to subprojects also in the source-project (#12579)
      Eclipse: use new variable CMAKE_ECLIPSE_GENERATE_SOURCE_PROJECT
      install(EXPORT): Enforce existence of imported target files
      Remove trailing whitespace
      cmake-gui: add completion for the names when adding cache entries
      automoc: stricter checking for what file is included
      automoc: rework the checking for the matching header, to give better warnings
      automoc: handle the case when the developer includes the wrong mocfile
      automoc: add more test cases
      automoc: improved diagnostics
      automoc: minor optimization
      automoc: another runtime optimization
      Automoc: modified handling of included .moc files
      automoc: add a test for including both abc.moc and moc_abc.cpp
      automoc: add test for including the moc file from another header
      automoc: add test for including a moc_abc_p.cpp file
      automoc: move some code from the big parsing loop into separate functions
      automoc: add special handling for including basename_p.moc, with test
      automoc: add extra check whether the header contains Q_PRIVATE_SLOT
      automoc: some more linebreaks for the warnings for better readability
      automoc: fix handling of included _p.moc files
      automoc: move the code for finding headers into separate function
      automoc: add a StrictParseCppFile(), which is only qmake-compatible
      automoc: also accept other files when .moc is included in non-strict mode
      automoc: accept even more .moc files in non-strict mode
      automoc: add variable CMAKE_AUTOMOC_STRICT_MODE, to enable strict parsing
      automoc: fix line length
      automoc: add documentation for CMAKE_AUTOMOC_STRICT_MODE

Alexey Ozeritsky (1):
      FindLAPACK: Fix linking to static LAPACK on Unix (#12477)

Bernhard Walle (1):
      Source/cmCTest.cxx: Add missing newline (#12538)

Brad King (65):
      Refactor find_* command final path list computation
      Constify XCode generator getters to match cmGlobalGenerator
      Fix line-too-long style violations
      KWSys: Fix Doxygen warnings
      Add pre-commit|commit-msg|prepare-commit-msg hook placeholders
      pre-commit: Reject changes to KWSys through Git
      Fix CTest.UpdateSVN with Subversion 1.7 (#12535)
      Teach CTest.UpdateSVN to detect svn add --depth before using it
      KWSys: Address Intel compiler remarks
      Fix linking to OS X Frameworks named with spaces (#12550)
      Watcom: Use shortpath to CMake if full path has parens (#12548)
      KWSys: Remove trailing whitespace in SystemTools.cxx
      KWSys: Fix wrong spelling of __INTEL_COMPILER
      Update main Copyright.txt year range for 2011
      KWIML: The Kitware Information Macro Library
      Configure KWIML inside CMake as cmIML
      KWIML: Avoid redefining _CRT_SECURE_NO_DEPRECATE in test.h
      KWIML: Suppress printf/scanf format warnings in test
      KWIML: No INT_SCN*8 on SunPro compiler
      KWIML: No INT_SCN*8 on Intel for Windows
      KWIML: Create test output dir for Xcode
      Order VS local generator Version ivar values consistently
      Enumerate VS11 version explicitly in local generators
      KWIML: Test header inclusion after system headers
      KWIML: Ignore _LONGLONG on MS compiler
      KWIML: Teach ABI.h about PGI compiler
      KWIML: Avoid MSVC linker warning about not using C++ runtime
      Factor Compute(File|String)MD5 into cmCryptoHash helper
      Add file(MD5) command to compute cryptographic hash
      Import sha2 implementation 1.0 from Aaron D. Gifford
      Import sha2 implementation 1.1 from Aaron D. Gifford
      sha2: Use KWIML fixed-size integer types and endian-ness
      sha2: Build as part of CMakeLib
      Add file(SHA*) commands to compute cryptographic hashes
      sha2: Use "static const" instead of "const static" declarations
      cmCryptoHash: Provide factory "New" method
      Add string(MD5) and string(SHA*) commands to compute hashes
      sha2: Use KWIML fixed-size integer constant macros
      sha2: Suppress Borland warnings in third-party code
      Disable file() and string() hash commands during bootstrap
      sha2: Wrap long lines in third-party declarations
      Fix CMake.File hash test for CRLF checkouts
      cmCryptoHash: Add virtual destructor
      sha2: Cast safe conversions to smaller integer types
      sha2: Suppress -Wcast-align warning from Clang
      sha2: Zero entire SHA_CTX structure during cleanup
      target_link_libraries: Add missing space in documentation
      target_link_libraries: Simplify argument processing state tests
      install(EXPORT): Improve target import failure message format
      Remove trailing whitespace from cmLocalGenerator
      bootstrap: Include cmNewLineStyle in build
      cmNewLineStyle: Remove trailing comma in enum
      cmNewLineStyle: Use cmStandardIncludes.h
      Provide std::ios_base typedef on GCC < 3
      FindZLIB: Search under ZLIB_ROOT if it is set
      Factor out target location undefined behavior helper macro
      export(): Document undefined behavior of location properties
      Recognize the Tiny C Compiler (#12605)
      TinyCC: Add compiler info for shared libs on Linux (#12605)
      Fortran: Detect pointer size in gfortran on MinGW
      Load platform files that need to know the ABI when possible
      Factor makefile generator link rule lookup into helper function
      Add CMAKE_GNUtoMS option to convert GNU .dll.a to MS .lib
      Test CMAKE_GNUtoMS option in ExportImport on MinGW and MSys
      cmTarget: Create helper method for versioned library names

Clinton Stimpson (2):
      Fix XML safety issue with adding preprocessor defines in CodeBlocks project.
      Qt4: Fix dependencies of QtDeclartive.

Dan Kegel (1):
      Modules: Add XRes to FindX11.cmake

David Cole (17):
      Begin post-2.8.6 development
      CTest: Fix crash when variables are not defined
      VS11: Fix comment generated at the top of *.sln files
      CTest: Add COVERAGE_EXTRA_FLAGS cache variable (#12490)
      CTest: Clear custom vectors before populating (#12383)
      Tests: Add the MFC test (#11213)
      Tests: Avoid MFC test automatically for VCExpress builds (#11213)
      Tests: Fix MFC test w/ Make-based generators (#11213)
      Tests: Fix MFC test for old vs6 dashboards (#11213)
      Tests: Avoid MFC test automatically for Watcom WMake builds (#11213)
      Tests: Fix MFC test to work with VS 10 and later (#11213)
      VS10: Use expected values for UseOfMfc (#11213)
      Tests: Add environment logging to the MFC test (#11213)
      VS11: Update InstallRequiredSystemLibraries.cmake for VS11 (#11213)
      Tests: Nudge MFC test to pass on VS 6 dashboards (#11213)
      VS: Use "call " keyword with .cmd and .bat file custom commands (#12445)
      CTest: Disallow problem chars in build and site names (#11792)

Eric NOULARD (3):
      CPackRPM support component specific variables for spec files
      Fix old reference to CMAKE_MAKE_PROGRAM inside CMAKE_BUILD_TOOL doc.
      CPackRPM fix #12556 and enhance documentation

James Bigler (6):
      Added support for CUDA_PATH which is present in the CUDA toolkit 3.2 onward.
      Reset dependency file list when a dependency disappeared.
      Add work around for CUDA in UNC paths.
      Fixes for handling quotes in args and other places (Fix Bug 11726 and 12099).
      Make CUDA working directory unique for each target.
      Miscellaneous fixes.

Jean-Christophe Fillion-Robin (1):
      CTest: Look for CTestConfig.cmake in build dir first, then source dir

Johan Bjork (1):
      Xcode: Avoid spewing the environment on every script run (#12522)

Mateusz Loskot (1):
      FindBoost: Use MSVC11 to find Boost on Windows (#12568)

Mathieu Malaterre (1):
      TinyCC: Add default compilation flags (#12605)

Mike McQuaid (6):
      Add QT_LIBRARIES_PLUGINS variable to UseQt4.
      Add DeployQt4 module.
      Match fixup_qt4_executable with documentation.
      Don't resolve directories; are never relative.
      Check plugin variables are defined before warning.
      Check QtCore without warning.

Nicolas Despres (17):
      Refactor TargetTypeNames.
      Add const versions of some getters.
      Constify many getters of cmGlobalGenerator.
      Remove trailing white-spaces.
      Fix typo.
      Doxygen: Improve code documentation.
      Doxygen: Generate call graph and relationships.
      Doxygen: Fix warnings.
      Doxygen: Remove dependency on VTK when building doxygen.
      Usage: Document -j|--parallel option in help message.
      Usage: Document all options printing usage information.
      Usage: Document all options printing the version number.
      Usage: Print help, version and copyright options in usage information.
      Usage: Add missing exepath argument in get_prerequisites documentation.
      ccmake: Align 'g' and 'q' key instructions.
      ccmake: Document '/' key.
      ccmake: Factor toggle key help instructions.

Niels Dekker (1):
      Fix CMAKE_VERBOSE_MAKEFILE for VS10 vcxproj files (#12504)

Ondrej Balaz (1):
      FindBISON: Fix bison++ version parsing to avoid "Offending entry"

Peter Collingbourne (4):
      Make cmLocalGenerator::ConvertToLinkReference virtual
      Introduce a cmLocalGenerator::ConvertToIncludeReference function
      Introduce a cmGlobalGenerator::ResolveLanguageCompiler function
      Fix configuration-dependent flag lookup in cmLocalGenerator::GetTargetFlags

Peter Kuemmel (1):
      Add NEWLINE_STYLE option to configure_file (#3957)

Philip Lowman (1):
      FindProtoBuf: Documented limitation of the public macro

Pierre-Francois Laquerre (1):
      Fix path quoting in Qt4 macros

Robert Dailey (1):
      VS: Add VS_SCC_AUXPATH target property (#12549)

Rolf Eike Beer (4):
      libarchive: fix typo in CheckFileOffsetBits.cmake
      Tell people that link_directories() is not what they are searching for
      FindBISON: Fix matching output of "bison --version"
      Tests: ExternalProject: Remove unnecessary 'svn --version' call

Stephen Kelly (13):
      Add features from KDE for arguments to qdbusxml2cpp.
      Remove unused define.
      Build each library only once instead of once for each test.
      Initialize LINK_INTERFACE_LIBRARIES target property with a variable
      Also run moc automatically with Qt5.
      Fix typo.
      Don't assume the existence of QT_MAJOR_VERSION.
      Update comments and method names to not be Qt4 specific.
      Fix style.
      target_link_libraries: Trim trailing whitespace
      target_link_libraries: Add LINK_(PUBLIC|PRIVATE) options
      moc is now part of the Qt5Core module
      Add a test case for the use of Q_PRIVATE_SLOT.