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BIC-MNI / libminc

libminc is the core library and API of the MINC toolkit
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Installs headers that have generic names #105

Open ryandesign opened 5 years ago

ryandesign commented 5 years ago

libminc installs a number of headers into the include directory of the installation prefix that have generic names, such as ParseArgv.h, read_file_names.h, restructure.h, and time_stamp.h. These files might collide with files installed by another package, or might cause build failures of other projects that have project-local include files of those names, if those projects don't use the right order of -I flags (which is a very common problem) resulting in the -I flag for the system include directory appearing before the -I flag for the project's own include files.

It would be better if the names of all of the headers that get installed directly into the include directory were changed to something that one could reasonably expect to be unique to libminc, or if they were installed into a subdirectory of the include directory instead (like you already do for the volume_io files).

These headers aren't installed if I set -DLIBMINC_INSTALL_NO_DEVELOPMENT=ON, but then most of the headers aren't installed, including minc.h and minc2.h; those sound important, which makes me think I should not use this option. I couldn't find an explanation of the LIBMINC_INSTALL_NO_DEVELOPMENT option, so I don't know who is expected to use it, under what circumstances, but the fact that it is not on by default suggests to me that it should not usually be used.

gdevenyi commented 5 years ago

Most of the minc tools have always been installed in their own private prefix, rather than the main system so this hasn't been an issue.

This is a good observation though, perhaps we need a mass prefix rename to prevent collisions. This is harder than you might think considering the size of minc-toolkit though....