file dependency generator?

[John R. Comeau]

~sdpm~
I have a large C project I work ON.  We have around 100 .c files.  At
one time I attempted to write a Perl program that would graph the
dependencies between these files.  What I mean by a 'dependency' is
that the C functions in one file call the C functions in another.  I
was attempting to graph this relationship in pTk using shapes
containing the names of the .c files connected by arrows pointing from
a "calling" file to a "called" file.

The graphing in pTk wasn't much of a problem, but trying to figure out
how to arrange this many files was a problem.  These file nodes with
their connecting arrows ended up looking like a horrible mess, and
didn't shed much light on the relationship between the files.  I
played around with various algorithms (all invented by myself), but I
couldn't come up with anything to sort them out in a clear fashion.
Perhaps this means that the project is disorganized and poorly
modularized, but I tend to think the problem was more with my
algorithm for arranging them in two dimensions.

I was thinking that it would be a lot simpler to just create a
text-based structure something like this:

file_A
  file_B
    file_C
    file_D
  file_E
file_F
  file_G
  file_B
  file_H
    file_I

This is sort of like the directory structures you see in file_ browser
GUIs or generated by the Unix 'tree' command.  The problem with this
is that, like file_B in the example above, the tree is not a regular
tree.  Sometimes the branches rejoin themselves.

A similar is solved by the Data::Dumper by referring back to a data
structure it has already printed without printing it again.  I could
just take that approach and not repeat the tree when it's already been
printed.  If I took that approach, I could write a program really
quickly with Data::Dumper by just creating a data structure analogous
to the file dependency structure and then Data::Dump'ing it.

But does anyone have any ideas for graphing a full tree that shows all
the reconnected branches?  I.e. that would show the structure like it
really is - like a Hillbilly family tree?  I'd think that other
programmers have faced this problem before.

-John
~sdpm~

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