FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Girder?

Girder is a free and open source web-based data management platform developed by Kitware. What does that mean? Girder is both a standalone application and a platform for building new web services. To know more about Girder let’s take a look at the documentation.

What is a Slicer package?

A slicer package is just an installer package for a specific release of Slicer. There is a specific Slicer package for each different platform (Windows, MACOSX, Linux).

What is a Slicer Extension?

An extension could be seen as a delivery package bundling together one or more Slicer modules. After installing an extension, the associated modules will be presented to the user as built-in ones.

To know more about Slicer extension, see the Extensions Manager documentation.

Does the server collect download statistics ?

Each time an extension is downloaded (using the Client or the UI), a metadata is incremented on the release folder. This allow to referenced all downloaded extension even after their deletion.

The download count is stored in the metadata following this rule:

$ {
    'downloadExtensions': {
        baseName: {
            os: {
                arch: downloadCount
            }
        }
    }

How to interface with the Slicer Package Manager server ?

There are 3 different ways to use the Slicer Package Manager server:

  • By using the Commands shell (CLI):

    This is the more easy way to use the basic feature of the Slicer Package Manager. These commands allow you to easily create, list, or delete applications and releases, and also list, upload, download or delete application or extension packages.

  • By using the Python Client API within Python script:

    Using the Python Client API allow you to write scripts for create application, new release and automatically upload or download application or extensions packages.

  • By using the User Interface:

    The default girder user interface allows to browse through the Application, Release and Draft Girder folders and their associated Package and Extension Girder items.

How to create a new release with existing uploaded packages?

Follow this few steps to be able to update a draft release into a stable release:

  • Open the Girder UI, go under your application folder (Slicer here). By default it should be inside the Applications collection, that you can find under the Collections item in the main menu.

Applications
       |--- packages
       |        |----- Slicer

  • Look for the specific application revision folder under the draft folder within the application. All the packages which are contained in this folder will be part of the futur new stable release.

  • Select all the element contained in this folder by using the Pick all checked resources for Copy or Move action

  • Go to the new release folder, that you can create both by using the CLI or the Girder UI. In the case of the Girder UI you will need to give a specific metadata on the folder: revision: <revision-of-the-application> corresponding the this release.

  • Once you created the new release folder, enter inside it, then use the Copy picked resources here

  • You will just need to delete the draft sub-folder used to make the new stable release

How to clean up the Draft release folder?

Since a large number of draft packages may be uploaded on a regular basis. Older draft packages may be removed applying this process:

The command slicer_package_manager_client draft list <APP_NAME> --offset <N> allows to list the oldest draft subfolders related to old application revision. Using this command, you will be able to get a list of revision and then use the command slicer_package_manager_client draft delete <APP_NAME> <REVISION> in a loop to delete them all.

Note

The draft packages associated with the https://slicer-packages.kitware.com instance are automatically cleared using the clean-nightly-slicer-package-manager.sh script.