Documentation/Nightly/SlicerApplication/ExtensionsManager

Extensions in the Extension manager.

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

The Slicer community maintains a website referred to as the Slicer Extensions Catalog to support finding, downloading and installing of extensions. Access to this website is integral to Slicer and facilitated by the Extensions Manager functionality built into the distributed program.

The Catalog classifies extensions into three levels of compliance:

1. Category 1: Fully compliant Slicer Extensions: Slicer license, open source, maintained.
2. Category 2: Open source, contact exists.
3. Category 3: All other extensions (work in progress, beta, closed source etc).

To publish extensions, developers should consider reading the following pages:

• Bundle module(s) into a Slicer extension
• Build, test, package and distribute extensions

Prerequisites

ExtensionsManager must be enabled in the Application Settings (menu item "Edit -> Application Settings -> Extensions"). If you changed the setting, Slicer has to be restarted for it to become effective.

Installing an extension

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  1. Open extensions manager

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  2. Choose an extension

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  3. Look at extension details

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  4. Click on "Install"

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  5. Extension is installed

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  6. Restart Slicer

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  7. Extension is available

Uninstalling an extension

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  1. Open extensions manager

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  2. Click on "Uninstall"

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  3. Extension is scheduled for uninstall

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  4. Restart Slicer

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  5. Extension has been uninstalled

Disabling an extension

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  1. Open extensions manager

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  2. Disable extension

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  3. Restart Slicer

Incompatible extensions

Caveat: Considering that installed extensions are common to all Slicer version installed by a given user and that an extension is specific to a given revision of Slicer, it's currently not possible to have working extension installed for multiple version of Slicer. The issues has been reported as #1958 and is currently targeted for 4.2.0 release.

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  Incompatible extension has been identified

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  Error log message

Extensions Manager Settings

Extensions settings

Extensions server URL: Address of the server used to download and install extensions Extensions installation path: Directory where extension packages should be extracted and installed

Module settings

After installing an extension, the directories containing the modules bundled within an extension will be visible as additional module paths. Modules associated with an extension can also be disabled one by one.

Launcher settings

Whereas the module path is used to indicate Slicer where to look to load additional modules, the extension manager also takes care of updating the LibraryPaths / Paths / EnvironmentVariables in the launcher settings so that libraries associated with modules can be successfully loaded.