For a general introduction/features/limitations/requirement please refer to http://www.creatis.insa-lyon.fr/Public/Gdcm Just a quick note on the build process of GDCM. GDCM build process make use of the cmake software(*). This allow us: 1. To get rid of the autoconf/autotools insanity 2. Transparently generate Unix Makefiles, NMake Makefiles, Borland Makefiles, VS6/7/8 Project, XCode 1.5... 3. Automatic nightly testing, one of the most important thing for a robust library/software devlpt process. GDCM devpt is develop based on the XP definition, and to preserve backward compatibility make sure that code is working from one release to another: each night we configure, we build and we test GDCM. The result are then send to the dashboard located at: http://public.kitware.com/dashboard.php?name=gdcm A continuous dashboard make also sure that aby commit did not introduce any error on another plateform, a warning or broke a test... Therefore you should be able to use GDCM from the bleeding edge without knowing to much on what is going on. All you need to do is have a look at the GDCM dashboard, and if your plateform is 'green' then you can update your cvs copy and compile safely knowing that there are very few chances that something won't work. Cheers ! (*) http://www.cmake.org for more information