ITK v4 – Migration Guide
The ITK community recently released the Beta version of its new ITKv4 effort. The Insight Toolkit (ITK) is an open-source, cross-platform system that provides an extensive suite of software tools for image analysis.
To help members of the community use the new version of the toolkit, Kitware and the ITK team developed a Migration Guide (http://itk.org/migrationv4), whose release we are pleased to announce. The purpose of the Migration Guide website is to list all changes made to the API of ITK between version 3.20 and version 4.0. This listing also includes the typical changes that ITK community members should apply to their ITK-3.20-based code to make it compatible with ITKv4. The Migration Guide is powered by the open source solution phpMyFaq (http://www.phpmyfaq.de).
Its main features are presented below.
Up-to-date Information
The Migration Guide automatically updates its content based on the changes made by the community in the ITK Git repository:
As developers merge any changes that involve API modifications into the ITK Git repository, they are required to also include XML descriptions of those changes. These XML files contain essential information about the nature of the API change, and the impact of using the new code from ITK applications. The XML files are automatically submitted to the system hosting the Migration Guide and are processed in order to generate the web pages that are then made openly available for community members to browse.
What You Can Find on a Migration Post
Each change made by a developer is linked to a file explaining the change. The Migration Guide formats this file and displays the following information:
- A detailed description of the API change
- Examples of the previous and the new way to use the API
- A list of the modified files in the ITK Library and related changes
- A link to the Gerrit patch which contains additional information regarding the validation of the change, and the development discussion that led to the modification
All these pieces of information were identified as the elements that community members would need to know in order to easily migrate their applications from ITK 3.20 to ITKv4.0.
Share and Comment
As a community, we need to share, criticize, revise, and improve these vital pieces of information. We hope that the tools we added here will help readers have a smooth transition during their process of adopting ITKv4.0.
Finding Information
The Migration Guide uses a powerful search system that enables users to find the information they need. The website also uses dynamic tools for communicating with the search engines, allowing the information to be available in their search results.
ITK v4 Announcement: http://www.kitware.com/news/home/browse/ITK?2011_10_04&ITKv4+Beta+Now+Available
Download ITK : http://itk.org
Migration Guide: http://itk.org/migrationv4
Wiki : http://www.itk.org/Wiki/ITK_Release_4/Users_Migration_Guide