Grand 0.7.2 review
DownloadGrand is a tool to create visual representation of ant target dependencies
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Grand is a tool to create visual representation of ant target dependencies. It differs from tools like Vizant or AntGraph by a totally different approach, relying on the Ant API rather than parsing directly the XML files. This enables Grand to provide some nifty features such as the support of the ant 1.6.x tasks like import or subant.
From a user point of view, Grand can be used either as a standalone application with a nice GUI or as an Ant task generated a dot" file. In this latter case a post processing using Graphviz is required to get the actual graph.
On the right is a screenshot of the GUI displaying a very simple ant file. The left pane displays a sorted list of the targets, the lower pane the source code of the last selected node and the main one the dependency graph. In this graph, the default target is pictured in a yellow octagon, the targets with a description (main targets) in a cyan box while ovals are targets without description. The gray target is an external target located in another file but referenced by a task (subant in this specific case).
On the link side, the black ones are static dependencies (from the depends attribute) while the gray one are the dependencies created by tasks.
Here are some key features of "Grand":
finds both static (using the depends attribute) and dynamic (created by tasks like ant or antcall) dependencies,
supports ant 1.6 import statement,
supports most dependencies generating tasks: ant, antcall, subant and foreach, runtarget from antcontrib,
available as both as an easy to install (one single jar, no extra dependency) ant task or a stand alone application with a nice SWT GUI,
the GUI can open several files simultaneously and includes some inter files navigation features.
What's New in This Release:
Upgrade to ant 1.6.3,
Fixed build process.
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