Need a tool for visualizing ant execution flows and properties

Question

I'm trying to figure out how the DITA Open Toolkit performs DITA to XHTML conversions, and it's difficult since the process is managed by dozens of ant targets spread over multiple ant files.

I need a tool that can provide a visualization of the execution flow plus property dependencies of an ant invocation. VizAnt and Grand only graph target invocations, so I'm looking for something heavier-duty. Ideally, such a tool would identify the order of target invocations, as well as property values live at invocation, and properties, files, directories, classpath entries, etc. that are referenced in the body of a target.

My first thought was to manually graph it all in OmniGraffle, but the complexity quickly became unmanageable. Surely there's something more recent out there?

Answer 1

yWorks Ant Explorer is kind of cool.

Run it by executing the jar file: java -jar antexplorer.jar

It looks like yWorks no longer supports it and have removed it from their website. Links that used to go to Ant Explorer now just take you to their product listing page.

But there appear to be several places that have it available for download:

• http://yworks-ant-explorer.software.informer.com/
• http://webscripts.softpedia.com/script/Development-Scripts-js/yWorks-Ant-Explorer-29247.html
• http://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/?idea&id=135