Please port to VTK9

[tillea]

Hi,
Debian has packaged VTK9 and will drop VTK6/7 soon which affects nifti2dicom as it is reported in the according bug report. Thus I tried to build against VTK9 but this fails with

cd /builds/med-team/nifti2dicom/debian/output/source_dir/obj-x86_64-linux-gnu/src/gui && /usr/lib/ccache/c++ -DDIY_NO_THREADS -DFMT_SHARED -DH5_BUILT_AS_DYNAMIC_LIB -DITK_IO_FACTORY_REGISTER_MANAGER -DMPICH_SKIP_MPICXX -DMPI_NO_CPPBIND -DOMPI_SKIP_MPICXX -DQT_CORE_LIB -DQT_GUI_LIB -DQT_NO_DEBUG -DQT_OPENGL_LIB -DQT_WIDGETS_LIB -DVTK_HAS_OGGTHEORA_SUPPORT -D_MPICC_H -Dkiss_fft_scalar=double -I/builds/med-team/nifti2dicom/debian/output/source_dir/obj-x86_64-linux-gnu/ITKFactoryRegistration -I/usr/include/nifti -I/builds/med-team/nifti2dicom/debian/output/source_dir/obj-x86_64-linux-gnu -I/builds/med-team/nifti2dicom/debian/output/source_dir/obj-x86_64-linux-gnu/src/gui -I/builds/med-team/nifti2dicom/debian/output/source_dir/src/gui/../core -isystem /usr/include/hdf5/serial -isystem /usr/include/gdcm-3.0 -isystem /usr/include/ITK-4.13 -isystem /usr/include/vtk-9.1 -isystem /usr/include/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt5 -isystem /usr/include/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt5/QtOpenGL -isystem /usr/include/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt5/QtWidgets -isystem /usr/include/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt5/QtGui -isystem /usr/include/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt5/QtCore -isystem /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt5/mkspecs/linux-g++ -isystem /usr/lib/jvm/default-java/include -isystem /usr/lib/jvm/default-java/include/linux -isystem /usr/include/freetype2 -isystem /usr/include/python3.10 -isystem /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/openmpi/include -isystem /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/openmpi/include/openmpi -isystem /usr/include/jsoncpp -isystem /usr/include/libxml2 -isystem /usr/include/eigen3 -isystem /usr/include/double-conversion -isystem /usr/include/utf8cpp -g -O2 -ffile-prefix-map=/builds/med-team/nifti2dicom/debian/output/source_dir=. -fstack-protector-strong -Wformat -Werror=format-security -Wdate-time -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2  -fPIC -pthread -MD -MT src/gui/CMakeFiles/qnifti2dicom.dir/init.cpp.o -MF CMakeFiles/qnifti2dicom.dir/init.cpp.o.d -o CMakeFiles/qnifti2dicom.dir/init.cpp.o -c /builds/med-team/nifti2dicom/debian/output/source_dir/src/gui/init.cpp
/builds/med-team/nifti2dicom/debian/output/source_dir/src/gui/init.cpp:68:10: fatal error: QVTKWidget.h: No such file or directory
   68 | #include <QVTKWidget.h>
      |          ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~
compilation terminated.

as you can see here in the full build log.

It would be great if you could port your nice tools to the latest VTK version.
BTW, we will also drop ITK4 support - so migrating to ITK5 would be extremely valuable as well.

Kind regards, Andreas.

[tillea]

Hi,
it would be great if you could clarify any time scale when you consider a port to VTK9. Otherwise we have to remove nifti2dicom from Debian.
Kind regards, Andreas.

[tillea]

Hi again,
if you have any interest in keeping this package inside Debian please at least let me know that you intend to work on this issue. Otherwise I will ask for removing this package from the Debian distribution.
Kind regards, Andreas.

[drdanz]

Hello @tillea thanks for reporting this.
I had a quick look at the failing builds, and I tried to see if it could be fixed easily, but unfortunately I don't think I will have the time for porting nifti2dicom to VTK 9 right now, and to be honest I don't think I will be able to do it any time soon... Unfortunately, I have no idea about what kind of changes were done since the last time I used ITK/VTK (which was at least 10 years ago), so even if the required changes are trivial, it would require too much time for me.

If anyone is still using this project and would like to step on as the maintainer, he is welcome.

CC @gabri470

[nileshpatra]

@drdanz since you are also the debian maintainer of this package, and were somehow unreachable, a RM bug #1023390 has been filed. If you happen to find another maintainer/want to save this package, please close the bug accordingly.