4 ms·

Visualising dependencies in Go

97 points by yla92 12y ago

idunning 12y ago
I tried something similar with Julia packages [1] but I only tried force graphs - with similarly poor results for the most part. The data I used is already out of date (got another 80 packages since then! [2]) so maybe a good reason to revisit with these other graph styles. [1]: http://iaindunning.com/2014/pkg-deps.html http://iaindunning.com/2014/pkg-deps.html [2]: http://pkg.julialang.org/pulse.html http://pkg.julialang.org/pulse.html
baq 12y ago
are there any good dot implementations in js?
- mes5k 12y ago
  https://github.com/cpettitt/dagre/wiki https://github.com/cpettitt/dagre/wiki
  - baq 12y ago
    perfect, thanks!
kagebe 12y ago
Wasn't the original goal 'Reducing the coupling between our core packages'? How is a fully display of all the transitive dependencies necessary for that? The goal already implies, that what's important here, are the (both direct and indirect) dependencies between their packages. To understand those better, you do not need to draw a dependency to any Go core library or other 'uninteresting' library, which would be a leaf in the directed graph or whose transitive dependencies are only 'uninteresting'. I think those chord graphs might actually be the way to go, if you'd just restrict the amount of packages to the relevant ones. It might be nice to automatically add references to source lines where those dependencies are needed to the tooltip.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
padator 12y ago
You should try Dependency Structure Matrix. In my experience they are more scalable than other forms of software visualization. See https://github.com/facebook/pfff/wiki/CodeGraph https://github.com/facebook/pfff/wiki/CodeGraph
omegaworks 12y ago
Any implementations of this for Python?
not_kurt_godel 12y ago
Yikes, this post made me realize how I've never seen a chord graph that I liked or coherently communicated data. Is there anything they're actually useful for?
bkirwi 12y ago
If anyone's trying this at home, I'd suggest scoping down the problem a bit: - Trying to get rid of a specific problematic dependency? It's easy to filter a DAG to only those paths that lead to a particular node. - Trying to reduce the raw number of dependencies? Consider collapsing clusters of transitive dependencies down to a single node. (If one of your direct dependencies pulls in 20 unique deps of its own, you don't really need to know what they are or how they're connected to each other -- just that there are 20 of them.)

97 points by yla92 12y ago

I tried something similar with Julia packages [1] but I only tried force graphs - with similarly poor results for the most part. The data I used is already out of date (got another 80 packages since then! [2]) so maybe a good reason to revisit with these other graph styles. [1]: http://iaindunning.com/2014/pkg-deps.html http://iaindunning.com/2014/pkg-deps.html [2]: http://pkg.julialang.org/pulse.html http://pkg.julialang.org/pulse.html

baq 12y ago

are there any good dot implementations in js?

mes5k 12y ago
https://github.com/cpettitt/dagre/wiki https://github.com/cpettitt/dagre/wiki
- baq 12y ago
  perfect, thanks!

kagebe 12y ago

Wasn't the original goal 'Reducing the coupling between our core packages'? How is a fully display of all the transitive dependencies necessary for that? The goal already implies, that what's important here, are the (both direct and indirect) dependencies between their packages. To understand those better, you do not need to draw a dependency to any Go core library or other 'uninteresting' library, which would be a leaf in the directed graph or whose transitive dependencies are only 'uninteresting'. I think those chord graphs might actually be the way to go, if you'd just restrict the amount of packages to the relevant ones. It might be nice to automatically add references to source lines where those dependencies are needed to the tooltip.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

padator 12y ago

You should try Dependency Structure Matrix. In my experience they are more scalable than other forms of software visualization. See https://github.com/facebook/pfff/wiki/CodeGraph https://github.com/facebook/pfff/wiki/CodeGraph

omegaworks 12y ago

Any implementations of this for Python?

not_kurt_godel 12y ago

Yikes, this post made me realize how I've never seen a chord graph that I liked or coherently communicated data. Is there anything they're actually useful for?

bkirwi 12y ago

If anyone's trying this at home, I'd suggest scoping down the problem a bit: - Trying to get rid of a specific problematic dependency? It's easy to filter a DAG to only those paths that lead to a particular node. - Trying to reduce the raw number of dependencies? Consider collapsing clusters of transitive dependencies down to a single node. (If one of your direct dependencies pulls in 20 unique deps of its own, you don't really need to know what they are or how they're connected to each other -- just that there are 20 of them.)