Visualizing dependencies between libraries

[eberaud]

I started a new thread because I didn't want to hijack the great article about dependencies between classes : https://lavag.org/topic/19421-visualizing-dependencies-between-labview-classes/

 

Historically our code has contained numerous circular dependencies, where a member of library A would call a member of library B, and another member of library B would call another member of library A.

 

As you know this situation isn't great for at least 2 reasons (but I'd love to hear even more reasons from you)

 

1) There is no way to load just a basic library in a small project without loading almost all the source code of the application

2) There is no hope to be able to switch to Packed Project Library one day

 

After many days, I managed to refactor the code and got rid of almost all of the circular dependencies. I'd like to have a visual way to show the difference between the "before" and "after". The VI Hierarchy tool does show that but there is just way too much going on to really make sense of what we're seeing. I'd like a similar tool that would only show the dependencies between libraries, without seeing the details of the libraries content. Do you know such tool?

 

Thanks!

Edited January 26, 2016 by Manudelavega

[LogMAN]

I haven't seen such a tool around. However you should give the LabVIEW Link Browser a try. It's a tool to visualize the dependencies between all Sub-VIs of a selected VI. I used it a couple of month ago to demonstrate the differences between those linking issues, so maybe it works for you too.

 

Take a look into this post (scroll down to the picture; don't forget to read the post too ): https://lavag.org/topic/18654-should-i-abandon-lvlib-libraries/?p=112165

 

Here is an online example: http://resources.chrislarson.me/cla/#/

 

It's actually an open-source project on GitHub: https://github.com/wirebirdlabs/links, so just clone it and play around a bit. Maybe someone knows a way to make it visualize libraries only.

Edited January 26, 2016 by LogMAN