UmlGraph vs APIViz for Maven javadoc generation

Question

I'm wondering if there are any clear reasons to choose UmlGraph over APIViz for javadoc UML diagram generation in a Maven2 build. Are there any integration or features that one has over the other, they seem pretty similar?

Answer 1

There is an interesting thread here about UMLGraph vs apiviz (which are mentioned in this question on SO too) and my understanding is the following:

• UMLGraph is older but is really nice (dixit Fowler which has more weight than me).
• apiviz is a rewrite of UMLGraph but it's not really clear why the rewrote it.
• The "big" advantage of apiviz is that the build won't fail if Graphviz isn't installed (this doesn't justify a whole rewrite though in my opinion).
• apiviz doesn't generate graphs automatically, you have to add tags versus UMLGraph do it automatically by default (which can be convenient) and the totally automatic results is fine and easy for all (UMLGraph can also model composition relation with custom javadocs tags).
• UMLGraph seems to do more things ("it looks like apiviz does nothing more than provide a view of generalizations and interface utilization" or "the class usage shown by UMLGraph actually helps to understand how a class works") but I didn't check myself and this might be not true anymore or outdated.

So, if you project is public, the fact that apiviz gracefully works without Graphviz is nice. If you have lots of classes, having to add tags in javadoc everywhere is a big pain. If you're looking for special features, UMLGraph might offer more. Actually, I think you should experiment both as you obviously have a better knowledge of your needs and constraints for the final choice.

Answer 2

It is not true that apiviz requires annotations for the generation of graphs, as its documentation clearly states:

APIviz automatically discovers the relationship between packages and classes and their stereotype by default. Additionally, you can use the following doclet tags to add more relationships or to make the generated diagram look cleaner.