The following comments are intended for core gdcm developpers.

* Compiling gdcm:
  - Checkout the sources to an arbitrary directory noted GDCM (e.g. ~/cvs/gdcm).
  - Checkout the test images to an arbitrary directory noted GDCMDATA
    (e.g. ~/cvs/gdcm/gdcmData).
  - Optionally create a temporary installation directory GDCMINSTALL e.g.
    mkdir /tmp/gdcminstall
  - Create a target directory GDCMBIN e.g.
    mkdir /tmp/gdcmbin
  - Configure cmake from GDCMBIN:
    cd GDCMBIN
    ccmake GDCM
      * Toggle and adjust the required options and parameters, mainly
        -- GDCM_DATA_ROOT should be set to GDCMDATA
        -- CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX (equivalent of --prefix of the autotools)
           should be set to GDCMINSTALL
        -- CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE set to Debug or Release
        -- GDCM_DOXYGEN 
        -- GDCM_VTK When this option is on VTK_DIR might require manual
           configuration
        -- GDCM_WRAP_PYTHON
      * Configure cmake: hit c
      * Generate the makefiles (or dsw): hit g
  - Compile gdcm
    make  
  - Run the tests manually (optional):
    Caveat: if you run the tests before installing, you NEED to positionate
            the environment variable GDCM_DICT_PATH to GDCM/Dicts e.g.
            export GDCM_DICT_PATH=~/cvs/gdcm/Dicts
    Assuming your cwd is GDCMBIN, three modes are then available:
    -- 1/ acces to a by number:
          ./Test/gdcmCxxTests
    -- 2/ acces to a test by it's name, by passing it as argument to
          gdcmCxxTests e.g.
          ./Test/gdcmCxxTests hashtest
    -- 3/ launch all the full test suite (again we assume cwd is GDCMBIN):
          ctest
          This is equivalent to "make test".
          Note: ctest supports the argument filtering with regexp and
                the verbose mode e.g.
                   ctest -R print -V
                proposes the tests containing "print" in their name and
                makes a verbose output. For other options refer to the
                documentation at http://www.cmake.org.

* Sending the result to kitware's dashboard (optional)
  ctest -D Experimental
  The results should appear in
     http://public.kitware.com/dashboard.php?name=public
     under the name of your machine (uname), but for ease of use you can
     change the SITE variable in your CMakeCache.txt to something more 
     accurate such as: GDCM-my_machine_name. The entry will then be within 
     the "Experimental Builds" entry.

* Install gdcm (as specified by CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX)
  make install
  Note: the dictionaries used by gdcm are now located in
        CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX + /share/ (i.e. GDCMINSTALL + /share/ if you
        followed the above instructions).

* Python related section.
  Depending on the cmake flags you used in order to compile gdcm could
  be wrapped in two ways:
  - the first python wrappers of gdcm uses Swig (http://www.swig.org). These
    are the one generated when using autogen.sh --enable-python. 
    The entry point here is the file gdcmPython/gdcm.i which uses the
    Swig syntax. As the last lines of this file (the ones starting
    with the %include directive) only some classes are wrapped for python.
    In theory only the library interface (basically the classes gdcmHeader
    and gdcmFile) should be wrapped, but the time being some additional
    classes are added (just to make sure those classes are Swig compatible:
    swig is here used as some link checker!?).
    Since gdcm is written in C++, Swig will produce two different outputs:
      -- some C based low level wrapper (see gdcmPython/gdcm_wrap.c)
      -- some Python based object oriented so called "shadow classes" (see
         file gdcmPython/gdcm.py)
    We also added the file gdcmPython/__init__.py which is the one that
    actually gets loaded when one uses the gdcmPython Python package.
    The file __init__.py loads the Swig generated shadow classes (gdcm.py)
    but will only re-export the interface of gdcm which corresponds to
    the lines :
       gdcmHeader = gdcm.gdcmHeader
       gdcmDictSet = gdcm.gdcmDictSet
       gdcmFile = gdcm.gdcmFile
       [etc.]
    Hence this whole Swig wrapping process is quite odd since we shall
    wrap more classes (%include in swig.i) that eventually get exported to
    the final user by gdcmPython/__init__.py.
  - the second python wrappers uses the vtk (http://public.kitware.com/VTK/)
    native wrappers i.e. the binary vtkWrapPython. But it should be noticed
    that the purpose is here a bit different than the one of the Swig
    generated Python wrappers. When using vtkWrapPython the goal is to
    wrap a single vtk class namely vtkGdcmReader as defined in files
    vtk/vtkGdcmReader.h and vtk/vtkGdcmReader.cxx (and of course those
    files are hand made vtk oriented wrappers of gdcm).
    Those wrappers are the one generated when using
       autogen.sh --enable-python --enable-vtk
  - In order to understand the difference between both wrappers you should 
    compare both demo scripts gdcmPython/demo/vtkGdcmDemo.py and
    gdcmPython/demo/vtkGdcmReader.py. The first one only uses the
    Swig wrapped classes ("from gdcmPython import gdcmHeader') as opposed
    to vtkGdcmReader.py which also uses vtkWrapPython wrapped classes
    ("from gdcmPython.vtkgdcmPython import *").