NA-MIC National Alliance for Medical Image Computing Slicer / ITK / VTK Development Tools Steve Pieper, PhD

National Alliance for Medical Image Computing Overall Goals Understanding the Big Picture: –Code browsing with ctags –Source Navigator Debugging: –tkcon –Using the native debuggers –itkFilterWatcher

National Alliance for Medical Image Computing Ctags Exuberant CTAGS –Ctags.sf.net –This version comes with cygwin and most linux distributions Provides detailed tag files for emacs and vi Run in top level directory with –ctags –R.

National Alliance for Medical Image Computing Using the tags file from vim Put cursor on identifier of interest Type Control-] to jump to the tag –If there is more than one tag for this identifier, type :tselect and select desired tag from list Type Control-t to jump back to original spot You can nest tags on a stack to trace through a control flow

National Alliance for Medical Image Computing Source Navigator –Linux source code to compile –Windows binaries

National Alliance for Medical Image Computing Source Navigator Multi-directory class browser (see whole project) Hierarchy Display View all code –Jump to definitions and declarations –See comments and code Grep UI

National Alliance for Medical Image Computing Native Tools CMake creates makefiles and.SLN files that can be used outside of CMake for debugging –Resolve linker or option issues Can attach to running process with gdb or visual studio –Debug the C++ code

National Alliance for Medical Image Computing Visual Studio Slicer Debugging Start Slicer Tools->Debug Processes –Attach to wish84.exe, Slicer 2.4 –Run program until it crashes –Browse to Source directory and set breakpoints

National Alliance for Medical Image Computing gdb Debugging Start slicer (built in debug mode) Use ps to find process id of ‘parent’ vtk thread Use gdb command ‘attach ’ For debugging startup: –slicer2-linux-x86 Base/tcl/tkcon.tcl –Attach gdb –In tkcon: source Base/tcl/Go.tcl

National Alliance for Medical Image Computing Tkcon Very smart console written in Tk –Identifier completion Files Variables Class instances UI Windows –Command line editing like readline Create VTK class instances and experiment Write and test tcl code interactively

National Alliance for Medical Image Computing Interactive VTK Commands ListMethods –Tells all instances currently known to the interpreter Print –Calls the PrintSelf method ListMethods –Tell what methods are available in the interpreter

National Alliance for Medical Image Computing itk::FilterWatcher Uses itk Observer mechanism to register callbacks for common events –StartEvent –ProgressEvent –EndEvent Prints total running time

National Alliance for Medical Image Computing World’s oldest debugging tool Print statements in the code! –Just remember to disable them when you are done debugging… In C++ – vtkDebugMacro(“”); –Call GlobalWarningDisplayOn method for any instance of a vtkObject subclass In Tcl if {$Module(verbose) == 1} { puts "INIT: ${m}Init" } Use the –-verbose option in slicer to set the Module(verbose) flag

National Alliance for Medical Image Computing Resources