VtkLibrary upgrade

Hi, I was previously using vtk 5.80 version. I replaced the header files and modified my code and replaced the library files. I want to know Will it work same with this modificaion?

You want to upgrade from vtk 5.8 to vtk 9.1.0 ? I will definitelly not work.

yes I want to upgrade from vtk 5.8 to vtk 9.1. How can I successfully do this?

Try to update 5 → 6 → 7 → 8 → 9, but don’t get your hopes up.

It would be hard to get help for migrating code from one obsolete VTK version to another, so I would recommend to try to go directly to VTK9.

But before you start digging into the code, I would recommend to look around, because there may be better solutions out there now. The fact that nobody cared the maintain that code makes it quite likely that it was not that unique or valuable software.

What did this old software do? What is your overall goal?

its a 2D drawing software. My goal is to compile it in VS2019 but vtk5.8 doesn’t work in this version of Visual studio. Previously, it compiled in VS2010

@lassoan : I see your point of going directly to VTK9, but I do not think this is feasible for any reasonnably sized projects. Small projects should be reimplemented from scratch anyway.

Those people who have been maintaining VTK-based software in the past 15 years that could do a VTK 5 to 9 update, but I agree that it would probably not worth the trouble and would be better to rebuild the software on more modern foundations.

To get an idea of the amount and kind of changes needed, a good example is the VMTK project, as it is a medium-sized library with feature development mostly completed about 10 years ago, but consistently maintained since early VTK5 versions to the very latest VTK9 version. Most of the code changes are done just to keep it compatible with new VTK and ITK releases. The changes are fairly simple (if you know what to change and how) right until VTK-8.2. The VTK 8 to 9 change was probably 10x harder than all previous upgrades combined (see the changes here).

I only use VTK for 3D, so I don’t know if there is any state-of-the-art packages 2D drawing packages out there that are based on VTK. I would suspect that most of the 2D drawing applications (at least the simpler ones) are running in the web browser nowadays.

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Thanks for sharing actual porting experience @lassoan !

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