code_swarm is an experiment in organic software visualization.

See http://vis.cs.ucdavis.edu/~ogawa/codeswarm for a picture of what we want to produce.

Google Code Project : http://code.google.com/p/codeswarm/ Google Group/Mailing List: http://groups.google.com/group/codeswarm

I) How to build Java code_swarm in different environments.

Please visit http://code.google.com/p/codeswarm/wiki/HowtoBuild for more detailed and up-to-date information.

This quick guide explains how to setup your development environment to build the binary (ie. jar) version of code_swarm from Java sources. Explanations require at least an understanding of computing and of your Operating System, even if no Java skills are needed.

I.1) Setup You will need the "Ant" software building tool, and Sun's Java Development Kit, version 1.5 or later (OpenJDK may work but is untested).

I.1.a) Linux This guide is written with a Debian based Linux, Ubuntu 8.04. It requires some minor adaptation to use on other distribution (other packaging systems).

• install ant with the following command (or with your favorite graphical package manager): sudo apt-get install ant

• install sun-java-jdk 1.5 or 1.6 following your distribution recommendation sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk

• configure the Java SDK to specify the new installation path, for instance on Ubuntu: sudo update-java-alternatives -s java-6-sun

  See http://doc.ubuntu-fr.org/java

I.1.b) Windows

• download ant for all platforms at http://ant.apache.org/bindownload.cgi

• unpack it where you want it to be installed, and add the location of its binaries to the the "PATH" environment variable. For instance, add at the end : "C:\apache-ant-1.7.0\bin;"

• download Sun Java SDK at http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp

• install it and add the "javac" Java compiler to the PATH : "C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_06\bin;"

• then create a new environment variable called JAVA_HOME and set its path to something like "C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.X", where X is the specific version number.

I.2) Getting the sources

code_swarm sources are under a Google Code Subversion repository (svn) : http://codeswarm.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/

See the Subversion homepage on subversion.tigris.org for all appropriate tools and documents. I would recommend "TortoiseSVN" for Windows users. Unix-like users should get their native "Subversion" package.

See http://code.google.com/p/codeswarm/source/ for further instructions on how to browse and checkout the sources.

I.3) Building the sources

Quick build :

• Open a terminal/command line shell, change directory to the root of the code_swarm source folder.

• Compile the sources by typing "ant".

Other commands :

• "ant all" will also generate the Javadoc HTML sources documentation
• "ant clean" will delete all intermediate and binary files

I.4) Running code_swarm

These instructions are meant to be generic to cover most popular version control systems. Please visit http://code.google.com/p/codeswarm/wiki/GeneratingAVideo for more detailed and up-to-date information.

• Obtain the log from your software version control system. Save it as a text file.

• Convert your log file to the code_swarm XML data format: Change directory to "convert_logs." Generally, the syntax is:

   convert_logs.py -Y input_log.txt -o output.xml

  where -Y is a flag for your particular version control system. Type "convert_logs.py --help" for details.

• Create your own configuration by copying "data/sample.config" and editing it to your preferences.

• To launch code_swarm, type "run.bat" in Windows or "run.sh" in Unix. You will be prompted for the config file from the previous step.

• If you have specified TakeSnapshots=true in the config, saved images will be in the "frames" directory.