Plotting a dependency graph

While working with building loads of packages, it is often necessary to visualise dependencies between them. Two years ago I suffered a lot trying to do just that and at best I came up with a python script that gives a textual list of deps. Today, I found an awesome tool to plot dependency graphs. Although useless for most of the people, it is quite a nifty trick for the few who work with thousands of packages.

Two RPMs need to be installed before anything else

# yum install rpmorphan graphviz

Now, assume you need all the deps for rebuilding "rpm" (The actual RPM rpm)
First, generate a textual dep graph using:

# rpmdep -dot rpm.dot rpm

The "dot" is a file-format which will be used by the "dot" program to plot a graph. To plot the graph

# dot -Tsvg rpm.dot -o rpm.svg

The command takes rpm.dot and plots the graph in an svg format.

Simple!!

A sample image I generated is here: