Tools to document/visualize call graph?

Posted by Dave Griffiths on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Dave Griffiths
Published on 2011-01-12T14:51:50Z Indexed on 2011/01/12 14:53 UTC
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Hi, having recently joined a project with a vast amount of code to get to grips with, I would like to start documenting and visualizing some of the flows through the call graph to give me a better understanding of how everything fits together. This is what I would like to see in my ideal tool:

  • every node is a function/method
  • nodes are connected if one function can call another
  • optional square box in between detailing conditions under which call is made (or a label icon you can hover over like a tooltip)
  • also icon on edge describing parameters
  • hover over node and description is displayed
  • optional icons for node to display pseudo code
  • scenario/domain view - display subset of complete diagram for particular use-case
  • slide view mode - for each frame, the currently executing function is highlighted
  • plenty of options over what to display to reduce on-screen clutter

the interactive use of such a tool is key, I'm not looking for a Graphviz type solution because there would be too much clutter. The ability to form a view of a subset of the entire graph would be very handy (maybe with the unimportant clutter greyed out). Don't need automatic generation from source code, happy to enter it manually.

Almost like a mind-map.

Does that make sense? If you are not aware of such a tool, do you also think it would be useful? (Just in case I decide to go and scratch that itch one day!)

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