ENH: Configure the ObjectFactory autoload symbol name (backport of #6787)

[hjmjohnson]

Backport of to release-5.4. ObjectFactoryBase looked up the autoload entry point by string literal while plugins define it by name; both now derive from ITK_LOAD_FUNCTION_NAME, configured once into itkConfigure.h. No behavior change — the default is itkLoad.

Byte-identical change set. Every added and removed line matches #6787 exactly — verified by comparing the two patches with context stripped: 53 changed lines on each side, zero differences. Both are 9 files, +39/−14. The only variation in the raw diffs is two context lines at the top-level CMakeLists.txt insertion point, because the surrounding text differs between branches (details below).

Merge after #6787. This should not land before its main counterpart.

Related work	Status
main counterpart
Namespace mechanism decision
Slicer plugin uses the macro
Slicer's fork-side patch this supersedes

Why release-5.4 matters: it is the branch 3D Slicer builds against. This is enabling work with no improvement today — it makes one of four names configurable so independently-distributed ITK builds can eventually coexist in one process, as PyPI itk wheels (py_itk), SimpleITK (simple_itk) and Slicer (slicer_itk). The namespace mechanism question is #6786 and is not decided here.

Equivalence with #6787, and the one legitimate difference

Comparing only added/removed lines, ignoring context and hunk headers:

main-side changed lines: 53
5.4-side  changed lines: 53
==> ACTUAL CHANGES IDENTICAL

The two raw patches differ in exactly two context lines, in the top-level CMakeLists.txt hunk:

	context above the inserted block
main	set(ITK_LIBRARY_NAMESPACE "ITK") / endif()
release-5.4	configure_file(CMake/ITKConfigVersion.cmake.in ...)

ITK_LIBRARY_NAMESPACE does not exist on release-5.4 — it is a main-only feature — so the cache variable lands at the structurally equivalent slot (after ITKConfigVersion, before CMAKE_INSTALL_LIBDIR) rather than beside a sibling that is not there. Context lines describe the base, not the change.

An earlier revision of this PR also carried an ITKConfig.cmake.in export; it was removed from #6787 on review (no CMake logic consumes the load symbol name) and removed here in the same pass, so ITKConfig.cmake.in is untouched by both PRs.

Reviewer note: which files a static build exercises

The plugin-facing code is only reachable with BUILD_SHARED_LIBS=ON. ITK guards both factory plugin targets behind if(ITK_BUILD_SHARED_LIBS), so 3 of the 9 changed files are compiled only in a shared build (itkFactoryTestLib.h, itkFactoryTestLib.cxx, itkFileFreeImageIOFactory.cxx), and a static build does not register itkIOPluginTest. Of the remainder, 2 are CMake and 4 compile in both configurations.

Why extern "C" needs its own mechanism

extern "C" names carry no C++ namespace, so no namespace scheme reaches this entry point:

$ nm -gU libexternc.so
__ZN3itk2v67cppFuncEv     # C++ inside `inline namespace v6` -> mangled, namespaced
_itkLoad                  # extern "C"                       -> untouched

VTK hit the same thing and ships VTK_ABI_NAMESPACE_MANGLE(x) for it.

Verification on this branch

macOS 15 arm64, Apple clang via the pixi cxx environment, Release. All four phases run against release-5.4, not inherited from #6787.

1. BUILD_SHARED_LIBS=ON, default — build clean, itkIOPluginTest PASS.

plugin export:  000000000000717c T _itkLoad

2. BUILD_SHARED_LIBS=ON, -DITK_LOAD_FUNCTION_NAME=slicer_itkLoad — build clean, itkIOPluginTest PASS.

generated:      #define ITK_LOAD_FUNCTION_NAME slicer_itkLoad
plugin export:  000000000000717c T _slicer_itkLoad

3. Validation — a value that is not a valid C identifier fails configure:

ITK_LOAD_FUNCTION_NAME must be a valid C identifier, got 'bad name'

4. BUILD_SHARED_LIBS=OFF — build clean, 5/5 ObjectFactory + itkIOPluginTest tests PASS.

release-5.4 predates .pre-commit-config.yaml, so the pre-commit run --all-files gate does not apply on this branch.

[blowekamp]

In the current build/configuration of 3D Slicer this change I don't think is needed. See: Slicer/Slicer#8947 for the issue. They disabled adding the itkLoad function to the problematic ImageIO in 3DSlicer.

There is still SimpleITK and ITKPython which can try to load libraries and check for the itkLoad symbol. This can cause problems with the versions or build configuration of ITK does not match.With underlying issue reported above it is unclear to me if loading the library causes broad symbol conflict or if just creating an ITK object from the separate build.

We should consider making a more robust solution to the underlying problem. Perhaps adding a ITK version or build number automatically to the name to more broadly prevent the issue with loading itkLoad.

[hjmjohnson]

In the current build/configuration of 3D Slicer this change I don't think is needed. See: Slicer/Slicer#8947 for the issue. They disabled adding the itkLoad function to the problematic ImageIO in 3DSlicer.

There is still SimpleITK and ITKPython which can try to load libraries and check for the itkLoad symbol. This can cause problems with the versions or build configuration of ITK does not match.With underlying issue reported above it is unclear to me if loading the library causes broad symbol conflict or if just creating an ITK object from the separate build.

We should consider making a more robust solution to the underlying problem. Perhaps adding a ITK version or build number automatically to the name to more broadly prevent the issue with loading itkLoad.

See larger discussion in 6787. This is an enabling set of changes that does not, by itself, provide benefits. It does, however, make future work easier and more self-contained.

[greptile-apps]

Greptile Summary

This change makes the ObjectFactory plugin entry-point name configurable while preserving itkLoad as the default. A shared build configured with ITK_LOAD_FUNCTION_NAME=slicer_itkLoad built the focused plugin targets and passed the real itkIOPluginTest autoload flow. The generated configuration header, exported plugin symbol, and runtime lookup all used the configured name consistently.

T-Rex validation blocked

An independent runtime check of the default itkLoad configuration did not complete because the separate build was interrupted by an execution time limit. The renamed-symbol flow completed successfully.

Confidence Score: 5/5

The completed shared-library plugin autoload test supports merging this change safely.

No defects remain in the review output. The configured-symbol path was exercised end to end: the generated header, plugin export, and runtime autoload behavior all agreed on slicer_itkLoad.

Files Needing Attention: No files require changes from this review. The separate default-name runtime check did not complete, while the unchanged default value remains covered by the implementation's default setting.

T-Rex Logs

What T-Rex did

• Built the focused shared-library targets with ITK_LOAD_FUNCTION_NAME=slicer_itkLoad, using cmake --build /tmp/itk-trex-shared --target ITKIOImageBaseTestDriver FileFreeTestLib --parallel 4, and the build completed successfully.
• Ran ctest for the itkIOPluginTest in the shared library build, and the test passed 1 of 1 tests.
• Inspected the generated header and plugin to verify that slicer_itkLoad is defined, the plugin exports slicer_itkLoad, and the test auto-load wiring uses that symbol.
• Validated the exact renamed-symbol build and runtime results, including the target builds, test run output, and EXIT_CODE: 0 confirmations.
• Noted an environment blocker labeled agent execution limit that prevented completing the default-name build and its ctest run, though it does not block the renamed-symbol validation outcome.

_{Ran code and verified through T-Rex}

_{Reviews (1): Last reviewed commit: "ENH: Configure the ObjectFactory autoloa..." | Re-trigger Greptile}