file dependency generator?

[Todd Rockhold]

~sdpm~
Indirect (not Perl code) but perhaps potentially helpful:

http://www.cs.uni-sb.de/RW/users/sander/html/gsvcg1.html

http://data.mpi-sb.mpg.de/internet/news.nsf/Spotlight/19990308

http://www.cs.brown.edu/people/rt/papers/ordal96/ordal96.html

A simple "graph untangling" Java applet is an example in the Java JDK from
Sun.
LEDA (C++) has graph drawing algorithms.  I think LEDA is bundled with the
SuSE Linux distro.

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	John R. Comeau [SMTP:comeaujr at sd.conexant.com]
> Sent:	Thursday, April 27, 2000 5:53 PM
> To:	san-diego-pm-list at happyfunball.pm.org
> Subject:	file dependency generator?
> 
> ~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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~sdpm~

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