Slicer Developer Orientation
Welcome Slicer Developers. You are creating Slicer's future. After all, Slicer is an open source package suited for easy modular expansion by developers with ideas for Slicer designs and applications. This page acts as a portal to acquaint you with the basics of Slicer development and route you through the table below to an interactive Wiki exclusive to Slicer development that represents a vast community of individuals. The following table contains links to useful resources within the Slicer Wiki:
Before getting started, please look at the 3D Slicer Software License Agreement.
| Slicer 2.6 (Release) | Slicer 3 (Beta) | |
| Slicer Developer Documentation | Slicer 2 Getting Started | Development Project Homeage, Module Documentation and Slicer 3 Doxygen Source Documentation |
| Build Instructions | Slicer 2.6 Build Instructions and Transitioning Slicer 2 to Slicer 3 | Slicer 3 Build Instructions and Building a Slicer 3 Module GUI |
| Coding Considerations | Slicer 101 Tutorial | Slicer 3 Coding Style and Slicer 3 Interface Design |
| Source Code Repository (cvs/svn) Browsing | View VC | View VC |
| Slicer svn Repository and SVN Instructions | Accessing Source Code | svn Repository and Instructions for svn |
| Dashboard and Visual Blog | Slicer 101 Tutorial | Slicer 3 Dashboard and Visual Blog |
| Status Report | Slicer 101 Tutorial | Status Reports |
| Bug Tracker | Slicer 2 Bug Tracker | Slicer 3 Bug Tracker |
| Developer Discussion | Developer's Mailing List | Developer's Mailing List |
| Module Execution Documentation | Not Available | Execution Model and Adapting Slicer to Large Scale Experiments |
Slicer Development Basics
Slicer is based on VTK, a visualization library that provides a high-level interface to OpenGL and a pipeline mechanism to connect graphical filters. The library is implemented in C++ but provides a Tcl wrapper to instantiate and execute its methods. Tcl/Tk comprises the rest of 3D Slicer user interface and event handling.
Slicer software supports automatic testing and employs an extreme programming approach with nightly builds natively on multiple platforms. Recent accomplishments include added capability for plugging in external modules using XML-based command line interface.
Slicer 3 is the latest version of Slicer that has integrated within it features to make adding to Slicer easier than before. If you are new to Slicer, viewing slides on its architecture will familiarize you with its framework.