PointCloudLibrary / PointCloudLibrary/pcl

[FLANN] "Discussion around FLANN maintenance, possibility to use nanoflann"

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kind: proposal
Dominant language
C++
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Avg merge
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Merged PRs (30d)
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Description

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

FLANN library is not maintained anymore, it hardly had any commit since April 2019, as mandatory dependency for PCL It just seems a bit odd.

People have brought this issue in the past at least once: https://github.com/PointCloudLibrary/pcl/pull/84

Describe alternatives you've considered

No one around here is not unfamiliar with the direct fork https://github.com/jlblancoc/nanoflann, that offers better performance and flexibility.

I am curious whether people have ever considered this ? would we face any problems ?

A complete port is no small feat, but I would be happy to help.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

This is a discussion about replacing the unmaintained FLANN dependency with nanoflann; no files, tests, or entry points are named. Start by reviewing the prior PCL pull request #84 and nanoflann, then determine whether a complete port is feasible and what problems it would introduce. Done would require an agreed migration plan, not a defined patch.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
cpp
Domain
computer-vision
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
20/100

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