precice-config-visualizer 2.0.0

A tool for visualizing a preCICE configuration file as a dot file.

preCICE Config-Visualizer

The config-visualizer is a tool meant to help visualize and debug precice configuration xml files. This tool produces a dot file as output, which visualizes the various participants, communicators and meshes defined in the configuration file and the movement of data between them.

Installation options

Install directly from PyPi using pipx or via pip:

pipx install precice-config-visualizer

To also install the GUI, run:

pipx install 'precice-config-visualizer[gui]'

Usage

precice-config-visualizer --help
precice-config-visualizer [OPTIONS] [-o OUTFILE] [<CONFIG-FILE>]

The command line version of the tool transforms the XML configuration file into a dot graph and either outputs it to the terminal or writes it to a file. If the extension of the output file is .png, .pdf, .svg, or .jpg, then the tool will render the output using graghviz. The dot output is especially useful if the output needs to be altered for various reasons. To edit the dot version of the graph, displaying it using a dot viewer such as xdot can be helpful.

The tool reads from stdin if no configuration file is given as an argument and the output is printed to stdout if no output filename if specified using the -o option.

To generate graph.dot from precice-config.xml use:

precice-config-visualizer precice-config.xml > graph.dot
precice-config-visualizer -o graph.dot precice-config.xml

To generate an image from precice-config.xml use:

precice-config-visualizer -o graph.png precice-config.xml
precice-config-visualizer -o graph.pdf precice-config.xml
precice-config-visualizer -o graph.svg precice-config.xml

To modify the dot graph from precice-config.xml yourself use:

precice-config-visualizer precice-config.xml > graph.dot
# Edit graph.dot here
dot -Tpdf -o graph.pdf graph.dot

Further options can be used to control the output appearance. Some information can be turned off or merged. For a full list of options, run:

precice-config-visualizer --help

Licensing

The license was changed from GPLv3 to MIT in approval of all contributors at the point of change:

Contributor	Approved when
Benjamin Rodenberg <[e-mail]>	23.06.2025 16:30 CET
Benjamin Uekermann <[e-mail]	23.06.2025 16:59 CET
Frédéric Simonis <[e-mail]	23.06.2025 17:56 CET
Gerasimos Chourdakis <[e-mail]	23.06.2025 16:53 CET
Keefe Huang <[e-mail]	23.06.2025 17:51 CET