= ChimeraX Developer Meeting =

Zach, Eric, Tom

Greg on vacation

June 27, 2022

= Agenda =

== General ==

== ChimeraX ==

1) Should GDCM be added to the ChimeraX distribution, #1745

=== Build System ===
1) Supporting IDEs
  - may only need editable installs (will require workaround as namespace packages cannot be installed in this mode automatically)
  - editable installs should also let us call ChimeraX with Python for rapid iteration and the C launcher for detailed crash info
  - Zach mentioned PyCharm, LSP (Language Server Protocol), XCode
  - Greg mentioned Visual Studio 

2) API for getting C headers: get_include (see: numpy.get_include)
  - {{{native-packaging}}} moves bundle header and source files to {{{bundle/src/include/module}}} \
  - maybe just use header files?

3) API for getting library directories: get_libdir

4) macOS compiler call in Makefiles

=== Infrastructure ===
1) Beta releases on Toolshed

2) Decoupling core bundle version number from the ChimeraX release number

3) Prereq audit after 27 June 

4) arm64 port
  - Tom suggests zipping x86_64 ChimeraX and arm64 ChimeraX together
  - How best to backport M1 support from native-packaging to 1.4 release branch

5) Regular packages on the toolshed
  - Tom wonders if the functionality of python-gdcm is worth its weight
  - Zach thinks we should leverage our plugin architecture to let users install only the bundles they need

== Chimera ==
1) Back up the build machine to a solid state drive

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= Discussion =

* python-gdcm
  - The python-gdcm !PyPi package allows ChimeraX to read 16-bit lossless jpeg dicom data, ticket #1745
  - Should we put it into ChimeraX distributions, or on Toolshed, or leave it out?
  - We know of only one case where someone tried to open this format 3 years ago (Meghan McCarthy).
  - The python-gdcm package is pretty large, 27 Mbytes compressed on Windows, making it more than 10% of our Windows ChimeraX size.
  - We could put python-gdcm on Toolshed.  This is done for the realsense module to avoid increasing distribution size for a very rare feature.
  - Decided to just leave it out of distribution and not on Toolshed until a user expresses a need for it.

* Pip install command for ChimeraX
  - Would be useful for ChimeraX plugin developers to be able to pip install packages the need with a simple ChimeraX command., ticket #4762
  - Unfortunately the standard python pip module does not have a public API.
  - Could use subprocess ("python -m pip install --user ...") to install via a ChimeraX command.
  - There is a PyPi module pip-install (maybe others too) that provide a pip API that could be used.
  - Would be 
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= Action Items =
  - Present github continuous integration tutorial.  Zach
  - Remove pkg-config prereq if it is not being used for builds. Tom