Visualization tools for Erlang/OTP programs?

[Thomas Arts]

Hi Kent

I made a small supervisor visualisation tool two years ago. It is
based on Hans Nilsson's graph drawing program, whish in particular
is good in drawing trees (what one needs for supervision trees ;0).

I would recommend the SVG format nowadays. This Scaled Vector Graphics
is a standard from Adobe that can be used to draw vector graphics. It is
an open standard and plug-ins exist for Netscape and Explorer, for example.
Another cool drawing package is "dot" from Lucent (Bell Labs). There
is a backend for dot to produce SVG.

I attached my drawing software. If you would start the supervision
tree with supervisor:start(M,F,Args), then the visualization is started
with: visualize:supervisor(M,F,Args).

I had to change "eval.erl" slightly, but with the three modules attached and
Hans' graph drawing package (see user contributions), this should work well.
Let me know if it doesn't, then I'll look into it a bit better.

/Thomas


---
FMICS 03, June 5-7 in Trondheim.
Call for papers: http://www.inrialpes.fr/vasy/fmics/workshop-8/


Dr Thomas Arts
     Program Manager
     Software Engineering and Management
IT-university of Gothenburg
Box 8718, 402 75 Gothenburg, Sweden

Tel +46 31 772 6031
Fax +46 31 772 4899


----- Original Message -----
From: "Kent Boortz" <kent@REDACTED>
To: <erlang-questions@REDACTED>
Sent: Saturday, January 04, 2003 4:49 AM
Subject: Visualization tools for Erlang/OTP programs?


>
> Has anyone tested any general visualization tools to describe
> Erlang/OTP programs, i.e. to visually describe the supervision,
> process structure, messages, state etc? Like "ROOM Diagrams"?
> Any success, i.e. was the the time it takes to draw them worth it in
> your case? Do you find the visualization useful in the design phase
> before coding or as a way to create internal design documumentation?
>
> Are any of the nine types of diagrams defined in UML usable for
> describing Erlang/OTP programs?
>
> Do you use any free or commercial drawing tools that you recommend for
> drawing diagrams to describe Erlang/OTP programs?
>
> The only drawings I have done myself is ascii drawings of the
> supervision structure, I'm just curious about what others do and if
> there is any potential for creating visual programming tools to
> generate Erlang programs or part of Erlang programs like processes
> that use gen_fsm,
>
> kent
>
> Ref: http://www.smartdraw.com/resources/centers/software/room.htm
>
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