Opticks Developer Guide
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[edit] Introduction
Opticks is an open source, remote sensing application. Using Opticks you can create products from satellite and airborne imagery, video (motion imagery), Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), multispectral, and hyperspectral data. Opticks is also a developer framework, empowering software developers to extend its functionality. This guide helps C++ developers build capability for Opticks.
This developer guide is divided into five sections. The first section gives a general overview of features of the Opticks remote sensing development framework. The second section helps developers get started. This section describes how to download Opticks and get the necessary components to start developing with Opticks. The third section give an overview of Opticks development concepts and terminology. The fourth section describes how to setup your build environment, and the last section describes how to get started building the sample plug-ins.
[edit] Overview
Opticks supports processing almost any type of remote sensing data and makes adding capability easy. Using the plug-in architecture and public interface, you can quickly add your own processing algorithms or support for new types of remote sensing data. The plug-in architecture and public interface enable hundreds of developers to extend the capabilities of Opticks while minimizing conflicts. Opticks is also open source and licensed under LGPL 2.1. This means you can easily extend Opticks functionality, provide the capability to the open source community, or even embed it in your commercial application.
Opticks development features:
- Extensive API. Hundreds of classes with hyper-linked documentation. See the Opticks 4.1.1 API.
- LGPL v2.1 license. This license allows any plug-ins that you write to be placed under your own license, be it a commercial or open-source.
- Large development community. Over a hundred developers and twenty organizations are already developing with Opticks.
- Native Opticks functionality built using the public API. Over 150 plug-ins included in the core software.
- Software development help using the developer mailing list and mailing list archives. Ask questions of the project team members and get your development questions answered.
- Access to the full source code. Access to the Opticks source code isn't necessary to start building your own plug-ins. However, the source code is available if you want to extend the core capability or need help understanding Opticks. The source code is available on the downloads page.
Visit the Opticks site for more information: http://www.opticks.org
