VTK 9.4.0 Release

Announcements
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VTK Release Plan

Starting with v9.4.0, VTK will follow a regular (calendar-based) release plan.

  • Expect a minor release every 6 months with intermediate patch releases in between, as needed.
  • Depending on the features added to the release, the release may become a major release.
  • The master and release branches will split one month before the scheduled release date. Please ensure that all feature branches are merged before the split.
  • A proposed detailed release plan will be announced a few weeks before each release.

Following this schedule, the next planned releases are as follows:

  • VTK v9.4.0 is planned for November 2024
  • VTK v9.5.0 is planned for May 2025

Specific planning for 9.4.0 release:

  • 10/05/2024: Release split, no new features will be going into VTK 9.4.0 after this date
  • 10/05/2024 to 11/05/2024: Release candidates are published and tested. Critical bug fixes are integrated into the VTK release branch.
  • 11/05/2024: VTK 9.4.0 is released.
17 Likes
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(Almost) as planned, the 9.4.0 split will happen on 10/07/2024. The RC1 should be available soon after.

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Split has been done, the release branch contains now the candidates for the 9.4.0 release and the v9.4.0.rc1 tag has been added.

You can already go ahead and test it!

Binaries and tarballs should soon be available on https://vtk.org/download/

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Hi @mwestphal - we wanted to give it a try to the 9.4.0 release candidate but we were unable to find it on https://vtk.org/download/

Also, will it be compatible with Python 3.13? Currently the VTK package is one of the packages preventing us from doing the move to 3.13.

1 Like
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You can get access to the release candidate from VTK’s GitLab page: VTK v9.4.0.rc2. To download, click Code and use the download format of choice.

Screenshot From 2024-10-16 10-52-34
Screenshot From 2024-10-16 10-52-34455Ă—572 33.8 KB

Python 3.13 was released just last week on October 7th, 2024. VTK might work fine with it but hasn’t been tested.

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@RobPasMue if you are mostly interested in python you can grab the latest pre-release wheel:

 pip install --extra-index-url https://wheels.vtk.org vtk --pre
2 Likes
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Thank you both @Christos_Tsolakis and @sankhesh - I’ll give it a try!

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Looks like the wheels for 3.13 are not available yet on your PIP index :cry: Links for vtk (kitware.com)

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In this release candidate we could not upload the VTK wheels to pypi due an issue that we are currently resolving it. We should have it fixed by the rc3.

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I believe there is an issue with the 9.4 release and multiconfiguration installs. Previous, I have been able to do

cmake -H%~dp0/VTK -B%~dp0//build  -G "Visual Studio 17 2022" -A "x64" -DCMAKE_CXX_MP_FLAG=ON -DBUILD_SHARED_LIBS=ON
cmake --build build --config Release --target install -j 8
cmake --build build --config Debug --target install -j 8

and I will debug and release side-by-side where debug was post-fixed with “d”.

Now, no matter if my dependent projects are debug or release, they always end up using the last lib and dlls that were installed, when linking like this

target_link_libraries(myTarget PRIVATE ${VTK_LIBRARIES})

It has been a while since I used VTK with multi-configuration on Windows, but shouldn’t this work.

Another issue (could be) is that for shared build on latest VS2022, I needed to add
-DVTK_MODULE_ENABLE_VTK_FiltersFlowPaths:STRING=NO

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Hi @Jens_Munk_Hansen

Please prefer reporting issues on https://gitlab.kitware.com/vtk/vtk/-/issues
Also please make sure this is an actual regression and not present in 9.3

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I will check the old release tomorrow and if it worked in 9.3 report it the right place.

1 Like
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Building now. Report in an hour. No, it also didn’t work for 9.3.1. I guess it must have been a while ago that the TARGET_RUNTIME_DLLS were set correctly for multi-configuration builds in the configuration files in the lib/cmake/vtk-XX folder.

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VTK 9.4-rc2 is available on https://vtk.org/download/

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In RC3, third party HDF5 is badly out of date at 1.13.1, almost two years old. This version is now marked experimental, and deprecated. Please update to the latest stable version, 1.14.5. I suspect that you will not run into any significant API problems, unless VTK is using certain HDF5 advanced features. See the latest HDF5 information:

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There are CMake warnings with CMake 3.31.0 but the build is Ok. So they are not show stoppers. See: https://gitlab.kitware.com/vtk/vtk/-/issues/19526

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We have had some delay for the release cycle, hence full release is expected for 11/18/2024.

Sorry about the delay, we do not expect another delay.

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I’m afraid it’s too late for such a change. Please make sure to open an issue or even a MR to update this third party though.

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Thanks! Please open an issue.

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VTK 9.4.0-RC3 is available as a git tag and should soon be available on the download site.

All files can be found here: Index of /files/release/9.4