jGRASP is a

development environment In software deployment, an environment or tier is a computer system or set of systems in which a computer program or software component is deployed and executed. In simple cases, such as developing and immediately executing a program on the same m ...

that includes the automatic creation of

software visualization Software visualization or software visualisation refers to the visualization of information of and related to software systems—either the architecture of its source code or metrics of their runtime behavior—and their development process by mea ...

s. It produces static visualizations of source code structure and visualizations of

data structures In computer science, a data structure is a data organization, management, and storage format that is usually chosen for efficient access to data. More precisely, a data structure is a collection of data values, the relationships among them, a ...

at runtime. The runtime data structure visualizations are also available as plugins for IntelliJ IDEA, Android Studio, and Eclipse. jGRASP is implemented in

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mos ...

, and runs on all platforms with a Java Virtual Machine (Java version 1.8 or higher). GRASP (Linux, UNIX) and pcGRASP (Windows) are written in C/C++, whereas jGRASP is written in Java (the "j" in jGRASP means it runs on the JVM). The jGRASP web site offers downloads for

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ser ...

Mac OS Two major famlies of Mac operating systems were developed by Apple Inc. In 1984, Apple debuted the operating system that is now known as the "Classic" Mac OS with its release of the original Macintosh System Software. The system, rebranded "M ...

, and as a generic ZIP file suitable for

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

and other systems. For languages other than Java, jGRASP is a

source code editor A source-code editor is a text editor program designed specifically for editing source code of computer programs. It may be a standalone application or it may be built into an integrated development environment (IDE) or web browser. Source-code ed ...

. It can be configured to work with most free and commercial compilers for any programming language.

Visualizations

The

Control Structure Diagram The Control Structure Diagram automatically documents the program flow within the source code and adds indentation with graphical symbols. Thereby the source code becomes visibly structured without sacrificing space. See also * Diagram * Entity-re ...

(CSD) is a control flow diagram that fits into the space normally taken by indentation in source code. Its purpose is to improve the readability of source code. jGRASP produces CSDs for Java, C,

C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...

Objective-C Objective-C is a general-purpose, object-oriented programming language that adds Smalltalk-style messaging to the C programming language. Originally developed by Brad Cox and Tom Love in the early 1980s, it was selected by NeXT for its NeXT ...

Ada Ada may refer to: Places Africa * Ada Foah, a town in Ghana * Ada (Ghana parliament constituency) * Ada, Osun, a town in Nigeria Asia * Ada, Urmia, a village in West Azerbaijan Province, Iran * Ada, Karaman, a village in Karaman Province, ...

, and

VHDL The VHSIC Hardware Description Language (VHDL) is a hardware description language (HDL) that can model the behavior and structure of digital systems at multiple levels of abstraction, ranging from the system level down to that of logic gate ...

. The editing window provides CSD-based

folding Fold, folding or foldable may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * ''Fold'' (album), the debut release by Australian rock band Epicure * Fold (poker), in the game of poker, to discard one's hand and forfeit interest in the current pot *Abov ...

and a "context hint" feature that displays the first line of a code structure that is off-screen when the mouse is hovered over its CSD structure. The Java object viewers in jGRASP provide interface-based, structural, and other views of

and other objects and primitives during debugging and workbench operations. For example, a content-based view shows ArrayList and LinkedList in an identical way, as a list of elements. Structural views show the internal structure of

trees In botany, a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated stem, or trunk, usually supporting branches and leaves. In some usages, the definition of a tree may be narrower, including only woody plants with secondary growth, plants that are u ...

linked lists In computer science, a linked list is a linear collection of data elements whose order is not given by their physical placement in memory. Instead, each element points to the next. It is a data structure consisting of a collection of nodes which ...

hash tables In computing, a hash table, also known as hash map, is a data structure that implements an associative array or dictionary. It is an abstract data type that maps keys to values. A hash table uses a hash function to compute an ''index'', ...

, etc. Structural views of linked data structures display local variable nodes and their relation to the main structure. The result is animated when changes occur, as when a node is added to a linked list. Common data structures are automatically identified and displayed structurally. Other viewers show, for example, a color swatch for a Color, the image for an icon, and the binary details of a double. Multiple viewers can be combined on a single viewer canvas window and the contents can be saved to file. The Complexity Profile GraphVisualization and Measurement of Source Code
(CPG) is a statement-level complexity diagram. Its purpose is to aid in identifying overly complex areas of source code. jGRASP generates CPGs for both Java and Ada. The metric includes common measures, such as

reachability In graph theory, reachability refers to the ability to get from one Vertex (graph theory), vertex to another within a graph. A vertex s can reach a vertex t (and t is reachable from s) if there exists a sequence of Glossary of graph theory#Basics, ...

and content complexity, which can be displayed individually. jGRASP also generates

UML The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a general-purpose, developmental modeling language in the field of software engineering that is intended to provide a standard way to visualize the design of a system. The creation of UML was originally m ...

diagrams for Java, with interactive dependency information.

History

jGRASP was created by James Cross and Larry Barowski at the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering in the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering at Auburn University. It is maintained and evaluated by th
jGRASP Team
The development of jGRASP has been supported by a research grant from the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...

. The development of previous versions of GRASP was supported by research grants from

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...

Marshall Space Flight Center, the Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (

DARPA The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Ad ...

), and the Defense Information Systems Agency (

DISA Disa is the heroine of a Swedish legendary saga, which was documented by Olaus Magnus, in 1555. It is believed to be from the Middle Ages, but includes Old Norse themes. It was elaborated by Johannes Messenius in his drama ''Disa'', which was t ...

References

External links

Official website

Videos about Java jGrasp on MrBool.com
{{Integrated development environments Integrated development environments Java development tools Freeware