The MITK Plugin Generator is a command line tool to simplify the process of creating your own MITK project (optional) and plugins. It can either be downloaded here or used from an existing MITK build.

The Plugin Generator takes the following command line arguments:

./MitkPluginGenerator -h
A CTK plugin generator for MITK (version 1.2.0)

  -h, --help                      Show this help text
  -o, --out-dir                   Output directory (default: /tmp)
  -l, --license                   Path to a file containing license information (default: :/MITKLicense.txt)
  -v, --vendor                    The vendor of the generated code (default: DKFZ, Medical and Biological Informatics)
  -q, --quiet                     Do not print additional information
  -y, --confirm-all               Answer all questions with 'yes'
  -u, --check-update              Check for updates and exit
  -n, --no-networking             Disable all network requests

Plugin View options
  -vc, --view-class               The View's' class name
  -vn, --view-name              * The View's human readable name

Plugin options
  -ps, --plugin-symbolic-name   * The plugin's symbolic name
  -pn, --plugin-name              The plugin's human readable name

Project options
  --project-copyright             Path to a file containing copyright information (default: :/LICENSE.txt)
  --project-name                  The project name
  --project-app-name              The application name

[* - options are required]

If a project name is provided via the –project-name argument, the new plugin will be generated as part of a new project.

Creating a new MITK plugin

Here is an example call to the Plugin Generator, creating one plugin with the symbolic name com.mycompany.myplugin and a View named My View:

./MitkPluginGenerator --plugin-symbolic-name org.mycompany.myplugin --view-name "My View"

If you did not already specify the final location of the plugin via the –out-dir argument, move the directory (in our example /tmp/org.mycompany.myplugin) to your existing project. Do not forget to add the plugin in your project's build system (usually in the file <your-project>/Plugins/Plugins.cmake).

Creating a new MITK project

Prerequisites

MITK-based projects created with the Plugin Generator need the same prerequisites as MITK itself. See the Build Instructions for MITK for details.

Here is an example call to the Plugin Generator, creating the same plugin as above but integrated in a new project:

./MitkPluginGenerator --plugin-symbolic-name org.mycompany.myplugin --view-name "My View" --project-name "MyProject" --project-app-name "MyApp"

The generated project is completely self-contained and can be configured via CMake immediately. When building the generated project, it will first download all required dependencies (like MITK itself). For an explanation of the project's build directory layout and how to configure MITK from your project's superbuild CMake configuration, see Creating a new MITK project.

Limitations

The Plugin Generator supports only a very limited set of possible configuration options. For more customizations of your project or plugin, you must familiarize yourself with CMake and the generated build system.

Further, the generator is not able to modify existing projects, it can only create new ones.

Build system for plugins

Just put new files in your plugin's src or src/internal directory and edit the files.cmake file there. If you have any fancy stuff like external libraries and include directories you should have a look at the CMake manual and general MITK build system documentation.

Troubleshooting

I get "Could not find library" messages and similar stuff when I try to start my project's executable.: This is mostly due to wrong environment settings. On Windows, make sure that you use the supplied batch files to start Visual Studio or your project's executable. If you still get errors, double check the value of the PATH variable in your batch files (it must contain MITK's binary directory and paths to the ITK, VTK and Qt libraries.

: On Linux, set your LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable accordingly.