MAKEPPGRAPH(1) Makepp MAKEPPGRAPH(1)NAMEmakeppgraph-- Graphical analysis of the dependency graph
DESCRIPTION
?: -?, A: -A,
--args-file,
--arguments-file, B: -b,
--because,
--build-reasons, C: &cwd, D: -D,
-d,
--dependencies,
&dir,
--dot,
--down,
--downwards, G: -g,
--graphviz, H: -h,
--help,
&home,
--html, I: -I,
-i,
--include,
--include-dir,
--includes, L: -l,
--log,
--log-file, M: -M,
-m,
&makepp,
$MAKEPPGRAPHFLAGS,
--merge,
--module, O: -o,
--output, P: -p,
--plain, R: -r,
--rename, S: -s,
--separate-directions,
&suf, T: -t,
--text, U: -u,
--up,
--upwards,
&usr, V: -V,
--version
makeppgraph [ option ... ] [ pattern ... ]
mppg [ option ... ] [ pattern ... ]
They say "A picture is worth a thousand words". So let's draw your
dependency or include graph from various viewpoints. Check out the
gallery <http://makepp.sourceforge.net/gallery/> to get some ideas of
what you can do.
Each node represents a source file or a target, colored according to
file name patterns. A file's node is rectangular. A phony target's
node is oval. Each solid edge represents a direct dependency.
Alternately or additionally you can display include relationships as
dotted lines. For a more detailed but not so pretty textual view see
makepplog.
But beware, even for a small build the complexity can be staggering!
This is because with .o files and system includes you easily have twice
as many nodes as source files. But that is nothing -- the number of
edges often far exceeds that of nodes, due to multiple include
statements. A crossing-free layout is usually impossible.
In real projects the complexity becomes insane. Techniques like
template based source file generation, preprocessors (e.g. embedded
SQL, interface definition languages, Qt library) or publishing of files
to central directories (e.g. to have only one "-I" or "-L" option) make
the graph explode. Even if edges are just one pixel wide, you end up
with broad black stripes of criss-crossing edges.
Once you realize what really goes on, if you're lucky, you may be able
to find a way of simplifying your build setup. But before you get
there, you must drastically reduce the amount of information you
display. To that end there are various selection, renaming and merging
possibilities in "makeppgraph". When you fail to strike a balance
between reducing the graph so far that it becomes sensibly displayable,
while still showing what you want to see, you may fall back to a
textual graph.
OUTPUT FORMATS
Graph layouting, display and manipulation are complex tasks, which are
beyond the scope of "makeppgraph". Instead it produces input files for
specialized tools. It creates an output file replacing or adding the
appropriate suffix to its first input file. If that is .makepp/log,
the default, the output file will skip the .makepp directory, leading
to log.udg. If the first input is - (stdin), the output goes to
stdout.
uDraw(Graph)
With uDraw(Graph) <http://www.informatik.uni-bremen.de/uDrawGraph/> you
get a fairly modern GUI, which allows to select parents or children,
find the other end of an edge, or hide subgraphs. Tweaking the options
like the node distances, and using splines for edges can make the graph
prettier.
While the above features make this a tremendously useful tool, there
are a few small hitches:
· It is quite memory hungry, such that, after a longish meditation,
it may crash without having displayed anything -- a clear sign that
you must reduce the number of nodes and/or edges further.
· It strongly separates graph attributes and display options. This
means that you can't put into a generated graph the fact that it is
to be oriented sideways (which is generally necessary here because,
even when renamed to something short, filenames are much wider than
tall). As a workaround, if you don't want to make it your default,
or choose orientation from the menu every time, they propose a
little starter script:
export UDG_HOME=/where/ever/uDrawGraph-3.1
TMP=`mktemp -t udg.XXXXXX` || exit 1
trap "rm -f $TMP" EXIT
echo "[menu(file(open_graph(\"${1-log.udg}\"))),menu(layout(orientation(left_right)))]" >$TMP
$UDG_HOME/bin/uDrawGraph -init $TMP
· It doesn't yet support node border colors. Due to this "--because"
displays double borders when they should be red.
· When merging several files into one node leads to self edges both
with "--dependencies" and "--includes", only one of these will be
displayed, randomly dotted or drawn through and with a label of
"2*".
Graphviz
Graphviz <http://www.graphviz.org/> consists of several command line
tools, which allow many more export formats than uDraw(Graph). That
includes not only static image formats but also input for designer
programs like dia. There is a utility "twopi" for creating a radial
layout, which is nice if your graph comes close to a true tree, i.e.
your dependencies fan out, but few nodes have common dependencies with
others. There are a few viewers available, none of which helps you to
navigate along the structure of the graph:
dotty
Its own display tool, dotty, has the advantage over uDraw(Graph)
that you can freely drag the nodes, without being restricted to the
level assigned by the layout. When your screen is full of edges,
dragging one node gives you a nice impression of where the edges of
that node lead to. But it also loses information when you modify
it. Apart from that it is an antiquated Xlib tool. It also
displays an annoying little circle on the middle of each edge, and
no option seems to get rid of it.
ZGRViewer
ZGRViewer <http://zvtm.sourceforge.net/zgrviewer.html> is a
separately downloadable Java viewer which has comfortable zooming
and panning. The graph is only viewable, no moving of nodes.
There are five buttons in the view area, which offer additional
fancy semi-3D zoom variations, but, unlike the basic functionality,
they can be extremely slow depending on your Java setup. For my
Sun Linux Java, the following gave a tremendous boost:
export J2D_PIXMAPS=shared USE_DGA_PIXMAPS=1
Grappa
Grappa is a separately downloadable Java 1.2 viewer. There is no
wrapper shell script, the jar contains no manifest, none of the
sources contain a main function, and with the appletviewer it
produced two tall windows which hang with a "starting applet"
message, so I don't know how to test this. It can be tried on a
demo web site as an applet.
Selecting an edge makes it bold red, so you can manually scroll its
other end into view without loosing it out of sight. Other than
that and zooming and deleting nodes it seems to have no useful
features. It ignores valid hexadecimal color specifications.
SVG SVG, one of the file types the backends can export to, is already
quite old. But some browsers still have problems with it. When
embedding it with an object tag only Opera scales it, others clip
it, which is useless for a thumbnail. When viewed as a document of
it's own, only Opera and Konqueror allow scaling it, while Firefox
scales only the labels. Even though the labels are text, no
browser can search for them. IE6 doesn't have a clue, unless you
install a plugin. A dedicated application, like Inkscape, can
serve you better.
HTML
This is a simple unordered list tree format that can be perused with
any browser. You should have JavaScript and CSS, which allows folding
subtrees and seeing colors. Usually your graph will not be a tree,
which is worked around by repeating nodes in every subtree needed, but
as a link to the first occurrence where you can see all its attributes.
Due to IE's limited Unicode support, vertical arrows are used for
include relations, instead of the usual dotted arrows.
Textual Graph
This is a simple indentation-based format that can be perused with any
text viewer. This means you can usually study much bigger graphs than
with the other formats. In Emacs you can use outline and foldout for
very powerful graph navigation with this little wrapper mode:
(define-derived-mode textgraph-mode outline-mode "Graph"
(view-mode)
(set (make-local-variable 'outline-regexp) " *.")
(set (make-local-variable 'outline-level)
(lambda () (/ (- (match-end 0) (match-beginning 0) -1) 2)))
(set (make-local-variable 'outline-font-lock-keywords)
'(("^ *\\(?:{[a-z,]+} \\)?\\([^{\n]+\\)" (1 (outline-font-lock-face) nil t))))
(setq imenu-generic-expression
'((nil "^ *\\(?:{[a-z,]+} \\)?\\(.+?\\)\\(?:{[a-z,]+}\\)?$" 1))))
The lines can have comma separated annotations between braces, unless
you also give the "-p, --plain" option. When these come before the
target they pertain to the relationship with the parent, i.e. the
previous line indented less. When they come after the target, they
pertain to the target itself. They are as follows:
because
When this comes before a target, the parent was built because of
this one. When it comes after, the target had some inherent reason
for being rebuilt.
bidirectional
This dependency or inclusion goes in both directions.
include
The parent includes this file. This annotation is only given when
also showing dependencies.
phony
This is a phony target.
repeated
The information about this target and its children was already
given earlier on.
OPTIONS
If you give no patterns, makeppgraph will start operating with all the
nodes it can extract from makepp's log. When given one or more
patterns (using "?", "*", "**" and/or "[...]"), it will match those in
the file system and operate on any that also occur in the log. For
these it will by default select "upwards", i.e. all targets that depend
on and/or include any of them and "downwards", i.e. all targets and/or
sources, which any of them depends on and/or includes. (The directions
are metaphorical, because the graph is best displayed from left "top"
to right "bottom" due to the width of the nodes.)
-A filename
--args-file=filename
--arguments-file=filename
Read the file and parse it as possibly quoted whitespace- and/or
newline-separated options.
-b
--because
--build-reasons
If a node was rebuilt because of a dependency, then that edge is
shown in red. Alas makepp applies optimizations to detect when a
target needs rebuilding, such that it often can't say which file
triggered the rebuild. If the node was rebuilt for a reason not
attributed to another file, then the node's border is red. With
uDraw(Graph) a double border is used instead, as it doesn't support
border color.
-D
--dependencies
Draw a graph of the dependency relationship determined by makepp.
This is the default unless "-i, --includes" is also given.
-d
--down
--downwards
This option is only meaningful if you provide one or more patterns.
It will then only select the targets and/or sources which the
matched files depend on, or which they include.
-g
--graphviz
--dot
Produce a Graphviz .dot file, instead of the default uDraw(Graph)
.udg file.
-h
--html
Produce a browser .html file, instead of the default uDraw(Graph)
.udg file.
-?
--help
Print out a brief summary of the options.
-I directory
--include=directory
--include-dir=directory
Add directory to Perl load path @INC.
-i
--includes
Instead of dependencies (or with "-D, --dependencies" additionally
to them) draw a graph of include relationships. This will only
have been logged as far as it needed to be analyzed. To get the
full picture you need a fresh full build.
-l filename
--log=filename
--log-file=filename
The filename is to where makepp wrote its log. It may also be a
directory, in which a file called .makepp/log or log will be
searched. To read from stdin, you must give - as a filename. When
this option is not given, it defaults to the current directory.
This option can be given multiple times, e.g. for merging all the
logs from "--traditional-recursive-make". But the dependencies you
hid from makepp through the evil recursion paradigm can't of course
show up here.
-M module[=arg,...]
--module=module[=arg,...]
Load module and import any functions it exports.
-m perlcode
--merge=perlcode
Perform perlcode for every target and its dependencies. See
merging for details about this option.
-o filename
--output=filename
Write the output to this file.
-p
--plain
Don't use attributes like colors or dotted lines. This is
especially useful for uncluttering "-t, --text" output. In that
format bidirectional edges will be lost unless you combine this
with "-s, --separate-directions".
-r perlcode
--rename=perlcode
Perform perlcode for every target and its dependencies. See
renaming for details about this option.
-s
--separate-directions
Draw two separate arrows, instead of each double ended arrow, to
make them easier to spot.
-t
--text
Produce a human readable .txt file, instead of the default
uDraw(Graph) .udg file.
-u
--up
--upwards
This option is only meaningful if you provide one or more patterns.
It will then only select the targets which depend on and/or include
the matched files.
-V
--version
Print out the version number.
REWRITING
The techniques in this chapter are usually essential to get a
reasonably sized graph. As they are formulated as Perl code, knowing
the language is helpful. But you should be able to achieve quite a lot
with the examples here or in the gallery
<http://makepp.sourceforge.net/gallery/>.
Renaming
This is the first name rewriting that occurs, if the "-r, --rename"
option is given. For every name encountered, perlcode gets called. It
gets a filename in $_, and it may modify it. This is often needed,
because makepp logs fully qualified file names, so one node can easily
be half a screen wide.
For one thing, you can rewrite names to "undef" or the empty string.
This will eliminate the node from the graph. Note that eliminating a
node in this first stage will break a chain of dependency if this node
was in the middle.
You can also rewrite various names to the same string, coercing them
all into the same node, which accumulates the combined dependencies and
dependents.
On the other hand you can just rename names to (usually) shorter names,
so as to reduce the width of nodes, which can be far to wide with
absolute filenames. There are a few predefined functions in package
"Mpp::Rewrite", in which your code also runs, you can use for this.
These return true if they did something so you can combine them as in:
--rename='cwd( 1 ) || &home || &usr'
&cwd
cwd number
cwd number, name[, separator]
Removes the current working directory from the beginning of path.
With a number, also replaces parent directories that many levels up
with the right number of ../ directories, where applicable. In
this case you can give an alternate name, like a piled up ':'
instead of '..' and additionally an alternate separator like ''
instead of '/'. In the first case you might get :/:/a/b, in the
second an even shorter ::a/b instead of ../../a/b. Passing a
number is useful if you draw in stuff from neighbouring trees. Or
you have a src directory, where most of the action is, so you call
makeppgraph there, but want to see the relation to your other
directories too.
If you give no "--rename" option, &cwd is the default. Should you
want no renaming, you can give some perlcode like "--rename=1" that
does nothing.
&dir
This one is a great reducer of graph complexity. It reduces every
file to its directory. That amounts to the question: "Files from
which directory depend on files from which other directory?" Note
that while the dependency graph is always acyclic (else makepp
wouldn't know where to start building), that is not true of this
reduced view. E.g. if dir1/a depends on dir2/b and dir2/a on
dir1/b that will display as a mutual dependency between dir1 and
dir2. Since a cyclic graph has no obvious starting point, the
layout may be odd.
Unlike the other functions in this section, this is not exclusive
with the others. So you may not want to logically combine it:
--rename='&dir; &cwd || &home'
&home
Replaces your home directory with ~/.
&makepp
Replaces the makepp installation directory with |m|.
&suf
suf number
This one is also a great reducer of graph complexity. It reduces
every file that has a suffix to an asterisk and that suffix. So
you can see which kinds of files depend on which other kinds. With
an argument of 0 it leaves the first character of the directory,
provided it is one of "/", "~" or "|" (as put in by &home or &usr
if you called those first). With a positive argument, it leaves
that many directory levels at the beginning. With a negative
argument, it removes that many directory levels at the end. So for
/a/b/c/d/e/x.y you get:
&suf *.y
suf 0 /*.y
suf 1 /a/*.y
suf 2 /a/b/*.y
suf -1 /a/b/c/d/*.y
suf -2 /a/b/c/*.y
For a relative a/b/c/d/e/x.y you get:
&suf *.y
suf 0 *.y
suf 1 a/*.y
suf -1 a/b/c/d/*.y
&usr
Under /, /usr, /usr/local, /usr/X11, /usr/X11R6, /usr/X11R7 or
/opt, for any of the directories bin, etc, include, lib or share,
the initials of these words are concatenated between bars.
E.g. /usr/local/bin/foobar becomes |ulb|foobar or
/usr/include/net/if.h becomes |ui|net/if.h. Note that `l' stands
for `local' when between two letters and for `lib' as the last
letter.
Merging
This is the second name rewriting that occurs, if the "-m, --merge"
option is given. This API is still under development! Currently the
target is passed in $_ and the dependency as an argument. If perlcode
returns a value, that value replaces both the target and the
dependency, merging them into one node. A few predefined functions can
help you:
c2o For any C/C++ source and the resulting .o file, merge them into one
node, by adding to the source path a suffix of ">o" like
some/where/foo.cc>o, even if the .o file is in another directory.
exe For any .o file and the resulting executable of the same notdir
basename without a suffix or with .exe, merge them into one node,
by adding an asterisk to the .o file. This will not currently work
together with c2o.
x2 For any pair of files with the same name, usually a header or
library published to a central directory, merge them into one node,
by adding *2 to the dependency.
ENVIRONMENT
Makeppgraph looks at the following environment variable:
$MAKEPPGRAPHFLAGS
Any flags in this environment variable are interpreted as command
line options before any explicit options. Quotes are interpreted
like in makefiles.
AUTHOR
Daniel Pfeiffer (occitan@esperanto.org)
perl v5.20.3 2012-02-07 MAKEPPGRAPH(1)
