Reorganize Graphviz

In this project you extend your (practical) knowledge of all the construction and deployment tools that we have studied so far (make, subversion, rpm, autoconf, automake).

Graphviz

Graphviz is a set of tools for graph layout. It contains many different tools, including

• dot, which draws directed graphs;
• neato, which draws undirected graphs;
• lefty

The following picture of a finite state machine:

was generated from the dot file fsm.dot.

Componentizing Graphviz

The Grapviz distribution is configured with autoconf and automake. Graphviz provides a number of libraries that could be useful for other projects. The libraries are not exported or installed. Graphviz is a big monolithic distribution. If one is only interested in dot, for example, it is still necessary to download and build the entire distribution.

The goal of this exercise is to take the graphviz distribution apart and divide it into small, separately distributable components.

(Note: it is not clear that such components can actually be distributed separately, because of the licence restrictions.)

Process

• Download and unpack the graphviz distribution. Graphviz is available from http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/graphviz/

• Unpack the graphviz distribution (tar xvfz filename.tar.gz)

• Build and install the graphviz distribution

• Compile a few graphs with the dot program

• Extract from the graphviz distribution a minimal source tree that implements the dot and neato programs. These are in the dotneato subdirectory. Put this in a Subversion repository. The general approach is to start with (e.g.) dot.c and determine what else is needed to build it. For example, for dot you also need libdot.a (in dotneato/dotgen), and so on. Recursively add these components to the repository until you have a working program. (So don't import all of graphviz at once; it's much too big).

• Do the same for the lefty program

• If you can, try to make sure to factor out the overlap between the two source trees into separate packages. Indeed, it would be a good idea to factor out libraries into their own packages, such that they can be used by other software. This may require the use of shared libraries. Determine the dependencies between the components. Create a dot graph to depict the dependencies.

• Put each package under control of Autoconf and Automake.

• Create RPMs for the packages produced (by extending the Makefile)

Structure of the Repository

For each package pack that you extract create in your subversions repository a directory pack/ with subdirectory trunk/ in which the main branch of the package can be found.

Technical Issues

Since the Graphviz package is rather large, you may not have enough disk quotum in your home directory. You can make a subdirectory under /praktikum/se/work to store your files. There are no quotas on /praktikum/; don't abuse this. Also ensure that your directory is not readable for others, i.e., do:

chmod go-rwx /praktikum/se/work/your_directory

Submission

To submit the componentized graphviz send the URL of your subversion repository and the names of the packages that you have created.