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NAME

gvmake - A make tool that generates pretty graphs from Makefiles

SYNOPSIS

    # print usage info to stdout:
    gvmake -h

    # if the default target is 'all', the following
    # command will generate all.png
    gvmake

    # this command will generate 'test.png' where
    # 'test' is a target defined in the Makefile:
    gvmake test

    # override the default output file name:
    gvmake -o make.png test

    # specify the Makefile name explicitly:
    gvmake -f t/Makefile.old install

    # generate Makefile.png which contains all the goals
    gvmake -a

    # specify the size of the output image:
    gvmake -s 5x8    # width is 5 inch, and height is 8 inch

    # use neato rather than the default dot layout program:
    gvmake -o foo.dot -f foo.mk -a
    neato -o a.png -Tpng foo.dot

DESCRIPTION

This is a make tool that generates pretty graphs for the building process according to user's Makefile instead of actually building something. It is a simple command-line frontend for the Makefile::GraphViz module.

For GNU makefile, it's highly recommended to use Makefile::Parser's makesimple script to convert your GNU makefile to the simplest form before running this script. Because this Makefile::GraphViz uses the toy Makefile::Parser engine which can only handle a very limited set of GNU makefile features while the Makefile::Parser::GmakeDB engine used by the makesimple script reuses the GNU make executable to do the (first-pass) parsing.

Thus you normally should do something like this:

    cd dir_where_your_project_lives
    makesimple -f your_makefile > simplest.mk
    gvmake -f simplest.mk some_target

Currently only PNG format and the default settings for the graph style are used. This inflexible design will be changed soon.

TODO

  • Add more command-line options to control the graph appearance

  • To support more output file format

  • Add support for multiple goals passed in via command-line.

BUGS

Please report bugs or send wish-list to http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/Bugs.html?Dist=Makefile-GraphViz.

SEE ALSO

Makefile::GraphViz, Makefile::Parser, plmake.

AUTHOR

Zhang "agentzh" Yichun, <agentzh@gmail.com>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Copyright (C) 2005, 2006, 2007 by Zhang "agentzh" Yichun. All rights reserved.

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.