ITK Maintenance Hackathon Recap – January 2025

January 28, 2025

The ITK Maintenance Hackathon held on January 23, 2025 brought together a passionate community of developers, researchers, and contributors to collaboratively enhance the Insight Toolkit (ITK). This event was a testament to the power of open-source collaboration, showcasing the shared commitment to improving ITK’s functionality and advancing its impact on scientific computing.

Event Highlights

This year’s hackathon saw impressive participation, with contributors joining from around the globe. Over 19 participants engaged in a mix of hands-on coding, interactive discussions, and issue-solving marathons. Whether attending in person or virtually, the energy and dedication were palpable throughout the event.

Achievements and Metrics

The hackathon yielded remarkable outcomes that underscore the community’s effectiveness and dedication:

Issues Tackled: 34 GitHub issues were addressed (closed), ranging from documentation updates to core performance enhancements.
Pull Requests: 10 pull requests were merged, introducing new features, fixing bugs, and improving existing functionalities. 12 more were opened and are under review.
Collaboration: Attendance throughout the day averaged 15 people. Innovative solutions emerged from group discussions, addressing longstanding challenges within ITK’s architecture.

Notably, the event served as a platform for onboarding new contributors, many of whom submitted their first pull requests during the hackathon. Their fresh perspectives brought invaluable contributions to the community.

Beyond directly tackling issues via pull requests, we triaged ~250 issues from our ~300 long list. Some were closed as outdated. Some were closed as fixed (and we forgot to close them earlier). Many others were assigned to milestones: ITK 6.0 Beta 1 (planned to be tackled in the next few months), Backlog (will be considered for future releases), and IceBox (the usual contributors to ITK don’t have resource to complete these, but new and infrequent contributors are welcome to take them up).

Community Impact

Beyond the technical accomplishments, the hackathon fostered a sense of camaraderie and collaboration within the ITK community. Participants shared their experiences, learned from one another, and built connections that will extend far beyond this event.