It would also be great if somehow the resolution of this issue fixed the fact that dashboard tests failing on Windows do not have any console output. These failing tests are rather useless, because they do not help in localizing the problem. Few of the many examples:

http://trunk.cdash.org/testDetails.php?test=3072116&build=64664
http://trunk.cdash.org/testDetails.php?test=3429598&build=64448

see http://slicer-devel.65872.n3.nabble.com/VTK-errors-and-warnings-in-CXX-tests-td4033751.html

For showing the console output on the dashboard on Windows, probably the simplest would be:

• always build Slicer as a console application
• put the console-enabled launcher in the build tree
• put the non-console-enabled launcher into the install tree

I would not want the releases built with console on unless there is a way to suppress the black dos box popping up (I haven't looked in a while, but last time I checked that was the only way to get console output).

On the other hand when building in debug mode, or when testing is enabled, it would be fine for the dos box to pop up.

If you start any process (either console or window based) with QProcess, the new process will not have a console.

So, if you launch SlicerApp-real.exe with a window based launcher (CTKAppLauncherW.exe) then there will be no black boxes. If you run the same SlicerApp-real.exe with a console based launcher (CTKAppLauncher.exe) then it will have a console and Slicer outputs will be redirected to that.