One other benefit PlantUML has over the mentioned tools is that by defining your diagrams in plain text you make them diff-able in pull requests. Come PlantUML and GitLab rendering to the rescue: GitLab allows you to inline PlantUML diagrams directly into your Markdown files and they will be rendered on the fly when viewing the files in the browser. files into a repository does make sure your diagrams are always versioned with the code - but they are not browsable in Web UIs. Putting PowerPoint/Keynote/Visio/Enterprise Architect. One thing I was always lacking with this approach is visualizing things. By putting the documentation into the same repository as the code you make sure to always look at the correct state of documentation for a respective point in time.įor that reason I love putting all my documentation either within the sourcecode as comments or as Markdown files next to the sourcecode. Another important part is versioning - usually software is versioned using git or similar systems. One part is to update documentation if the code itself is updated. This post will not go into the details of each of those diagram types because the PlantUML website does a pretty good job at describing sequence, component, activity and the other diagram types.Ī basic component diagram showing data flow can be built using the following markup: componentĪpp -> to love PlantUML □ Versioning □Ī very important aspect for developing software and writing documentation is to keep it in sync. There are different diagram types available being described with custom syntax but following a common scheme. PlantUML Basics □□įor those that do not know PlantUML: It is an open source tool that allows you to define UML diagrams with plain text. Using it in different places and for various purposes I came across a bunch of issues that I want to share in this post. You can see it being used in my plantbuddy and techradar projects on GitHub. Lately I have been using PlantUML extensively at work but also in my private projects. I have been wanting to write this post for months. Of course, if you are not accustomed to writing description language statements, then it may prove to be pretty difficult to carry out the process.This post covers PlantUML basics and how it can be used in GitLab or GitHub projects as well as a seamless local development environment using Visual Studio Code. To sum things up, PlantUml Sequence Diagram offers an intuitive layout for helping users design UML diagrams via a description language. It doesn’t put a lot of stress on CPU and memory, so the overall system performance is not burdened. Since it doesn’t require much computer knowledge to work with this tool, even rookies can set up the dedicated parameters with minimum effort.ĭuring testing PlantUml carries out a task very quickly, offers very good image quality, and no errors showed up throughout the entire process. What’s more, you can create the sequence, use case, class, activity, component, state, or object diagrams, and save the generated diagram to PNG or SVG file format. Mathematic with AsciiMath or JLaTeXMath notation.Specification and Description Language (SDL).The following non-UML diagrams are also supported Activity diagram (here is the legacy syntax).PlantUML Sequence Diagram is a component that allows to quickly write The tool gives you the possibility to insert the description language in a dedicated pane or import data from the following file formats: JAVA, HTML, C, CPP, Y, plain text, and others. PlantUml sports a clean and intuitive layout that offers only a few configuration settings to tinker with. PlantUML also helps blind software engineers to design and read PlantUML Sequence Diagram. This is Java-based utility, so you should make sure you have previously installed the working environment on your computer, otherwise, you cannot run the program. You can copy it on any USB flash drive or other devices, and take it with you whenever you need to create UML diagrams on the breeze, without having to go through installation steps. Since this is a portable program, it is important to mention that it doesn’t leave any traces in the Windows Registry. PlantULM Sequence Diagram Software is a lightweight Windows application whose purpose is to help users design UML diagrams using a description language.
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