visualizing the dependencies in a Makefile

Update 2014: I wrote a C version at https://github.com/lindenb/makefile2graph.

I've just coded a tool to visualize the dependencies in a Makefile. The java source code is available on github at : https://github.com/lindenb/jsandbox/blob/master/src/sandbox/MakeGraphDependencies.java. This simple tool parses the ouput of

make -dq

( here option '-d' is 'Print lots of debugging information' and '-q' is 'Run no commands') and prints a graphiz-dot file.

Example

Below is a simple NGS workflow:

%.bam.bai : %.bam
 
file.vcf:  merged.bam.bai ref.fa
merged.bam : sorted1.bam sorted2.bam
sorted1.bam: lane1_1.fastq  lane1_2.fastq ref.fa
sorted2.bam: lane2_1.fastq  lane2_2.fastq ref.fa

Invoking the program:

make -d --dry-run | java -jar makegraphdependencies.jar

generates the following graphiz-dot file:

digraph G {
n9[label="sorted2.bam" ];
n3[label="merged.bam.bai" ];
n10[label="lane2_1.fastq" ];
n11[label="lane2_2.fastq" ];
n2[label="file.vcf" ];
n4[label="merged.bam" ];
n6[label="lane1_1.fastq" ];
n8[label="ref.fa" ];
n7[label="lane1_2.fastq" ];
n0[label="[ROOT]" ];
n5[label="sorted1.bam" ];
n1[label="Makefile" ];
n10->n9;
n11->n9;
n8->n9;
n4->n3;
n3->n2;
n8->n2;
n9->n4;
n5->n4;
n2->n0;
n1->n0;
n6->n5;
n8->n5;
n7->n5;
}

The result: (here using the google chart API for Graphviz)

That's it,
Pierre