Beyond Linux® From Scratch (System V Edition) - Version r12.2-814

Chapter 11. General Utilities

Graphviz-12.2.1

Introduction to Graphviz

The Graphviz package contains graph visualization software. Graph visualization is a way of representing structural information as diagrams of abstract graphs and networks. Graphviz has several main graph layout programs. It also has web and interactive graphical interfaces, auxiliary tools, libraries, and language bindings.

[Note]

Note

Development versions of BLFS may not build or run some packages properly if LFS or dependencies have been updated since the most recent stable versions of the books.

Package Information

Graphviz Dependencies

[Note]

Note

Basic usage of Graphviz does not require any libraries out of what is found in the LFS book. Its “core” rendering engine is able to generate several graphic formats, such as Postscript, SVG, VML, .fig, and Tk. Those formats can be converted to almost any other format using tools from packages such as ImageMagick-7.1.1-36. The dependencies below add the ability to generate graph images in bitmap format, to display the graph image on screen, to edit a graph by viewing the resulting image directly, or to view large graphs. Since Graphviz is a dependency of several other packages in this book, it is suggested that you first build it without any dependencies, and then rebuild it when you have built enough packages to suit your needs.

Optional, for various bitmap outputs

Pango-1.55.0, with Cairo-1.18.2, Xorg Libraries, Fontconfig-2.15.0, and libpng-1.6.44, to generate images in bitmap SVG, postscript, PNG, and PDF formats, or to display the image on screen. The PNG output is required for building gegl-0.4.50

Adding GTK+-2 with libjpeg-turbo-3.0.1 adds support for JPEG, BMP, TIF, and ICO formats, and allows displaying the image in a GTK+ window

GD Library may be used instead of Pango. It adds the ability to generate images in GIF, VRML, and GD formats, but Pango provides better outputs for the other formats, and is needed for displaying images

Other formats may be added with libwebp-1.4.0 (WebP support is considered experimental), DevIL, libLASi, and glitz

Optional (to load graphics that may be displayed inside the nodes of a graph)

libgs.so from ghostscript-10.04.0, librsvg-2.59.2, and Poppler-24.12.0

Optional (to build more tools)

Freeglut-3.6.0 (with GtkGLExt and libGTS for building the smyrna large graph viewer, which is considered experimental)

Optional (to build language bindings)

SWIG-4.3.0 (SWIG must be installed or no bindings will be built), GCC-14.2.0 (for the go compiler), Guile-3.0.10, OpenJDK-23.0.1, Lua-5.4.7, PHP-8.4.1, Ruby-3.3.6, Tk-8.6.15, Io, Mono, OCaml, and R

Optional (building tools)

Criterion (framework for tests) and Electric Fence

Optional (for building the pdf documentation)

ghostscript-10.04.0 (for the ps2pdf command)

Installation of Graphviz

Install Graphviz by running the following commands: 

sed -i '/LIBPOSTFIX="64"/s/64//' configure.ac &&

./autogen.sh              &&
./configure --prefix=/usr \
            --docdir=/usr/share/doc/graphviz-12.2.1
[Note]

Note

A warning is generated by autogen.sh because the build tree is not a git repository. As a result, the build date is set to 0. To get a meaningful date in the version string, you can run: 

sed -i "s/0/$(date +%Y%m%d)/" builddate.h

Whether or not you fix the date, proceed to compile the package: 

make

This package does not come with a test suite that provides meaningful results.

Now, as the root user: 

make install

Command Explanations

sed ... configure.ac: This command is needed to avoid installing files in /usr/lib64.

--with-javaincludedir="$JAVA_HOME/include -I$JAVA_HOME/include/linux": If you have built OpenJDK-23.0.1 in /opt, and you want to build the JAVA bindings, it is necessary to specify the location of the JAVA header files to configure. The configure switch is designed for only one directory, but two directories need to be included. This is possible nevertheless by using the -I switch inside the variable.

--with-webp: Even if libwebp-1.4.0 is installed, it is not included in the build without this option.

--with-smyrna: Even if the needed dependencies are installed, the interactive graph viewer smyrna is not built without this option.

Configuring Graphviz

Config Files

/usr/lib/graphviz/config

Configuration Information

There are no specific configuration requirements for Graphviz. You may consider installing the additional plugins and tools available from the download page at https://graphviz.org/download/source/ for additional capabilities. If additional plugins are installed, you can run dot -c (as the root user) to update the config file in /usr/lib/graphviz.

Contents

Installed Programs: acyclic, bcomps, ccomps, circo, cluster, dijkstra, dot, dot2gxl, dot_builtins, edgepaint, fdp, gc, gml2gv, graphml2gv, gv2gml, gv2gxl, gvcolor, gvedit, gvgen, gvmap, gvmap.sh, gvpack, gvpr, gxl2dot, gxl2gv, mm2gv, neato, nop, osage, patchwork, prune, sccmap, sfdp, tred, twopi, unflatten, and vimdot
Installed Libraries: libcdt.so, libcgraph.so, libgvc.so, libgvpr.so, liblab_gamut.so, libpathplan.so, libxdot.so, and several plugins in /usr/lib/graphviz. There are also several in subdirectories of /usr/lib/{lua,perl5,php,python3.13,tcl8.6}. Unfortunately, some libraries are duplicated.
Installed Directories: /usr/include/graphviz, /usr/lib/graphviz, /usr/lib/tcl8.6/graphviz, /usr/share/doc/graphviz-12.2.1, and /usr/share/graphviz

Short Descriptions

acyclic

is a filter that takes a directed graph as input and outputs a copy of the graph with sufficient edges reversed to make the graph acyclic

bcomps

decomposes graphs into their biconnected components, printing the components to standard output

ccomps

decomposes graphs into their connected components, printing the components to standard output

circo

draws graphs using a circular layout

cluster

takes a graph in DOT format as input, finds node clusters, and then augments the graph with this information

diffimg

(needs GD Library) generates an image where each pixel is the difference between the corresponding pixel in each of the two source images

dijkstra

reads a stream of graphs and for each computes the distance of every node from sourcenode

dot

draws directed graphs. It works well on DAGs and other graphs that can be drawn as hierarchies. It reads attributed graph files and writes drawings. By default, the output format dot is the input file with layout coordinates appended

dot2gxl

converts between graphs represented in GXL and in the DOT language. Unless a conversion type is specified using a flag, gxl2dot will deduce the type of conversion from the suffix of the input file, a .dot suffix causing a conversion from DOT to GXL, and a .gxl suffix causing a conversion from GXL to DOT

edgepaint

performs edge coloring to disambiguate crossing edges

fdp

draws undirected graphs using a “spring” model. It relies on a force-directed approach in the spirit of Fruchterman and Reingold

gc

is a graph analogue to wc in that it prints to standard output the number of nodes, edges, connected components or clusters contained in the input files. It also prints a total count for all graphs if more than one graph is given

gml2gv

converts a graph specified in the GML format to a graph in the GV (formerly DOT) format

graphml2gv

converts a graph specified in the GRAPHML format to a graph in the GV (formerly DOT) format

gv2gml

converts a graph specified in the GV format to a graph in the GML format

gv2gxl

converts a graph specified in the GV format to a graph in the GXL format

gvcolor

is a filter that sets node colors from initial seed values. Colors flow along edges from tail to head, and are averaged (as HSB vectors) at nodes

gvedit

provides a simple graph editor and viewer. It allows many graphs to be viewed at the same time. The text of each graph is displayed in its own text window

gvgen

generates a variety of simple, regularly-structured abstract graphs

gvmap

takes as input a graph in DOT format, finds node clusters and produces a rendering of the graph as a geographic-style map, with clusters highlighted, in xdot format

gvmap.sh

is a pipeline for running gvmap

gvpack

reads in a stream of graphs, combines the graphs into a single layout, and produces a single graph serving as the union of the input graphs

gvpr

is a graph stream editor inspired by awk. It copies input graphs to its output, possibly transforming their structure and attributes, creating new graphs, or printing arbitrary information

gxl2dot

converts between graphs represented in GXL and in the DOT language. Unless a conversion type is specified using a flag, gxl2dot will deduce the type of conversion from the suffix of the input file, a .dot suffix causing a conversion from DOT to GXL, and a .gxl suffix causing a conversion from GXL to DOT

gxl2gv

converts between graphs represented in GXL and in the GV language

mm2gv

converts a sparse matrix of the Matrix Market format to a graph in the GV (formerly DOT) format

neato

draws undirected graphs using “spring” models. Input files must be formatted in the dot attributed graph language. By default, the output of neato is the input graph with layout coordinates appended

nop

reads a stream of graphs and prints each in pretty-printed (canonical) format on stdout. If no files are given, it reads from stdin

osage

draws clustered graphs. It takes any graph in DOT format as input

patchwork

draws clustered graphs using a squarified treemap layout. It takes any graph in DOT format as input

prune

reads directed graphs in the same format used by dot and removes subgraphs rooted at nodes specified on the command line via options

sccmap

decomposes digraphs into strongly connected components and an auxiliary map of the relationship between components. In this map, each component is collapsed into a node. The resulting graphs are printed to stdout

sfdp

draws undirected graphs using the “spring” model, but it uses a multi-scale approach to produce layouts of large graphs in a reasonably short time

tred

computes the transitive reduction of directed graphs, and prints the resulting graphs to standard output. This removes edges implied by transitivity. Nodes and subgraphs are not otherwise affected

twopi

draws graphs using a radial layout. Basically, one node is chosen as the center and put at the origin. The remaining nodes are placed on a sequence of concentric circles centered about the origin, each a fixed radial distance from the previous circle

unflatten

is a preprocessor to dot that is used to improve the aspect ratio of graphs having many leaves or disconnected nodes. The usual layout for such a graph is generally very wide or tall

vimdot

is a simple script which launches the gvim or vim editor along with a GUI window showing the dot output of the edited file

libcdt.so

manages run-time dictionaries using standard container data types: unordered set/multiset, ordered set/multiset, list, stack, and queue

libcgraph.so

supports graph programming by maintaining graphs in memory and reading and writing graph files. Graphs are composed of nodes, edges, and nested subgraphs

libgvc.so

provides a context for applications wishing to manipulate and render graphs. It provides command line parsing interfaces, common rendering code, and a plugin mechanism for renderers

libpathplan.so

contains functions to find the shortest path between two points in a simple polygon

libxdot.so

provides support for parsing and deparsing graphical operations specified by the xdot language