[PLUG] I Want A Good Linux Software Diagramming Tool!

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky znmeb at cesmail.net
Thu Mar 17 04:30:40 UTC 2005


Jason Van Cleve wrote:

>I think I'm going to lose it, here, fellows.  Visio is the one reason I
>still rely on Windoesn't for developing software.  UML diagrams are
>good, and I wouldn't want to design an application without them; but
>there really isn't a Linux equivalent to Visio.  Argo, last I looked,
>just doesn't hold a candle.
>
>And yet, the Windon't machine I use for this purpose has been
>spontaneously rebooting--a lot.  And the last couple of times this
>happened, my Visio document was corrupted, so that Visio wouldn't open
>it (even denied that it was a Visio file!).  So both times, my work was
>lost permanently.  This is unacceptable.
>
>I wanted to ask you all, once more, if there are ANY good UML tools for
>Linux--anything better than Argo, just to raise a standard.  But now I'm
>ready to bust my knuckles on this POS WinXP tower, and I would consider
>almost any alternative, so long as it's Linux based.
>
>Have you UML lovers any creative ideas, tools and techniques, that might
>help me break my Visio addiction?  I've come to depend on UML diagrams
>for design; and I'm almost ready to consider pencil and paper, but not
>quite.  :]
>
>--Jason V. C.
>
>--
>I'm out of my mind, but feel free to leave a message...
>_______________________________________________
>PLUG mailing list
>PLUG at lists.pdxlinux.org
>http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
>
>  
>
Someone already mentioned Poseidon, which IIRC is written in Java. 
Technically it's non-free as a result. However, it does have something 
many other tools don't -- an interface to a performance modelling tool 
called PEPA, also written in Java. Do a web search for PEPA; it's from 
Edinburgh IIRC.

There is also Kivio. The basic tool is free, but I believe added 
templates cost money. I've never used Kivio. And ... there's Dia. Dia is 
Gnu free as in freedom, reasonable robust for something with a 0.9x 
version number, and has add-on software "dia2code" for generating code 
from UML. I've never used this part of it, so I can't testify to its 
usability.

Just in case you're interested in database modeling, Dia also has an 
add-on that does that, though I've forgotten what it's called. And there 
is DBDesigner4 -- another package written in Java. I've found that most 
large-scale Java-based packages run reliably only with the Sun JRE, so 
be careful.



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