GraphViz-like tools for Matlab

You can use Matlab’s profile function to get some useful information about your scripts.

For example, running the profiler around CellOrganizer’s demo2D00

>> profile on; 
>> demo2D00(); 
>> profile off; 
>> profview

will produce a report similar to this one

Report from running a profile on demo2D00.

But sometimes you want something visual. And…. here comes GraphViz-like tools for MATLAB to the rescue!

GraphViz-like tools for Matlab “[…] creates a GraphViz dot language representation of the dependencies of a function.”

Using this tool is very straightforward, all you need to do is download the toolkit along with its dependencies; fdep: a pedestrian function dependencies finder and GraphViz.

Installation

Before we start you need

I tested the toolkit in Matlab 2014b for Mac. This shell script will download the toolkit and its two dependencies. Assuming you are using HomeBrew, it is will also install GraphViz

wget -nc http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/mlc-downloads/downloads/submissions/27608/versions/2/download/zip/docsgen_dot_tools.zip
unzip -o docsgen_dot_tools.zip
rm -f docsgen_dot_tools.zip
wget -nc http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/mlc-downloads/downloads/submissions/24652/versions/4/download/zip/drawDot.zip
unzip -o drawDot.zip
rm -f drawDot.zip
wget -nc http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/mlc-downloads/downloads/submissions/17291/versions/8/download/zip/fdep_21jun2010.zip
unzip -o fdep_21jun2010.zip
rm -f fdep_21jun2010.zip
brew install graphviz

If the above commands were successful, then you should see the following files as well as the dot binary.

$ ls
drawDot.m  hfdep    mGraphViz.m  script.sh  tfdep2.m  tfdep4.m
fdep.m    license.txt  mkdotfile.m  tfdep1.m  tfdep3.m
$ which dot
/usr/local/bin/dot

Example

This example makes the graph from a file in my desktop. Make sure the file save in the variable ifile exists before running.

echo "
ifile = '~/Desktop/script.m';
if exist( ifile )
  ofile = 'graph.dot';
  txt = mkdotfile( ifile, ofile );
  system( [dot -Tjpg graph.dot -o graph.jpg] );
  exit;" > make_graph.m
end
matlab -nodesktop -nosplash -r "make_dot_graph;"

The result from running the script above is the graph below

Graph

Result from running GraphViz-like tools for MATLAB on CellOrganizer’s demo2D00.

icaoberg/GraphViz-like tools for Matlab

Installation

Example