SimpleITK Release v2.5.5

Announcing the SimpleITK 2.5.5 Release!

Installing SimpleITK

Complete instructions on getting started with SimpleITK including downloading binaries or building SimpleITK can be found on the SimpleITK Read the Docs web page.

Release Highlights

SimpleITK in R on the Windows operating system is finally available!

SimpleITK 2.5.5 is the first official release to support building SimpleITK with R wrapping for all major operating systems. It is recommended to use the SimpleITKRInstaller to configure standard or custom builds without explicitly cloning the source code repository. Alternatively, R packages can be built from the SimpleITK source code directly by turning the WRAP_R flag on in the CMake configuration and following the R-specific installation instructions.

Added Support for R 4.6.0

Added Python Wheels for Free-Threaded CPython 3.14

In the ABI section of the wheel filename, the t in cp314t indicates support for free-threading. The small t in the wheel filename is a significant change. The Global Interpreter Lock (GIL) is now optional in CPython (PEP 703). With this change, Python natively supports true multithreading, running threads in parallel on multi-core systems and not in a serial fashion managed by the GIL. Read more about free-threaded Python on python.org. While this change may affect your native Python code, and requires a compatible SimpleITK built wheel, the other wheels continue to unlock the GIL during ITK code execution for parallel processing.

ITK 5.4.6

This distribution is based on the Insight Toolkit 5.4.6 release. Please see the ITK release notes for details.

What’s Changed

  • ENH: Add free-threaded Python (3.14t) packaging support - for release by @blowekamp in https://github.com/SimpleITK/SimpleITK/pull/2580

  • ENH: Update macOS CI runner from macos-13 to macos-14 by @blowekamp in https://github.com/SimpleITK/SimpleITK/pull/2584

  • Fix R CLOENV - for release and master by @blowekamp in https://github.com/SimpleITK/SimpleITK/pull/2585

  • BUG: Patch SWIG superbuild for R 4.6.0 API removals by @blowekamp in https://github.com/SimpleITK/SimpleITK/pull/2587

Full Changelog: https://github.com/SimpleITK/SimpleITK/compare/v2.5.4…v2.5.5