DOT: improved dot-based system visualization

Information
Submitter:	Ali Saidi
Repository:	gem5
Branch:	default
Bugs:
Depends On:
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Description

Changeset 8983:2d964402b9fc
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DOT: improved dot-based system visualization
Revised system visualization to reflect structure and memory hierarchy.
Improved visualization: less congested and cluttered; more colorful.
Nodes reflect components; directed edges reflect dirctional relation, from
a master port to a slave port. Requires pydot.

Testing Done

Screenshots

Ship It!

I won't block this, but I'd really like to see this dot code moved out into its own file.  The SimObject stuff is complicated enough as it is.  Also, didn't we talk about you generating the dot from the JSON output?  Did that not work?  Can you create some generic generator type code that could generally be used by dot and other things for traversing the graph?

Andreas Hansson May 2, 2012, 5:55 p.m. (May 2, 2012, 5:55 p.m.)

I agree that it would be possible to move the functionality, and traverse the tree of SimObject more along the lines of e.g. a visitor pattern. Before re-factoring and performing these more extensive changes it would be good to get things back to a working state though.

The JSON does not have all the information (e.g. the master/slave classification of the ports), and the first thing we would have to do with the JSON is to parse it to build a graph with the objects, their ports, and their connections. It seems like unnecessary work.

Nathan Binkert May 3, 2012, 3:47 a.m. (May 3, 2012, 3:47 a.m.)

As for fixing it first before refactoring, I don't care.  The end result code is pretty trivial and having it work through the history doesn't matter to me.

My main point is that this code is really complicated and I want to strip out everything unnecessary.  What I'd really like to see is one traversal mechanism in SimObject.py that is used by json and whatever else.  To be honest, you don't even really need any code in SimObject.py.  If you get a pointer to the instantiated root, you can just put all of the code outside (basically implement your function but rename self to node and stick it in a different file.  That said, parsing json is pretty trivial and traversing the json tree and fixing pointers isn't hard.

Andreas Hansson May 3, 2012, 3:56 a.m. (May 3, 2012, 3:56 a.m.)

We can move the code to a separate file outside SimObject.py. All we need is indeed a pointer to the root to be able to traverse the hierarchy.

The issue with the JSON data is that it does not contain all the information we need.

Ali Saidi May 3, 2012, 2:08 p.m. (May 3, 2012, 2:08 p.m.)

We could expand the data printed out by the json code. I think there is an except that just runs away from anything that isn't a scalar.

You have a pending review.

Review Board 2.0.15

This change has been marked as submitted.

Screenshots

Files

Status: Closed (submitted)