Reverse Engineering Tool
This is a tool developed by an SDL team (under direction of Drs. Flynn and Hasker) to generate readable UML diagrams from student projects. The goal is both to streamline workflows for students and faculty and help with learning the key elements of UML class diagram notation. This is an alpha version of the project; we know there are a number of issues to improve, but would like general usability feedback. Please send that feedback to Dr. Hasker.
Preliminary versions of the system are available in various forms:
- reveng-desktop.msi (Windows Installer): MSI installer for the Reverse Engineering Tool desktop app that will load projects from a folder and display a class diagram. This is not signed, so Windows will show a box saying that you are being protected from running this installer. You can click on the "more details" link so you can click on "run anyway".
- reveng-desktop.jar
(JAR for desktop app); this will run on any platform, but does not
install as an application. It can be useful for Mac and Linux users. Run
the JAR file using Java21:
java -jar reveng-desktop.jar
- Intellij
Plugin (reveng-intellij-plugin.zip); to install: open
IntelliJ, navigate to Settings | Plugins | Install
Plugin from Disk, and then select the
downloaded
reveng-intellij-plugin.zipfile. - reveng-cli.jar (reveng-cli.jar): command-line version of the tool. See the README for usage instructions.
This is a preliminary version, so expect problems. Known issues include
- Diagrams should be reorganized to reduce white space
- The user needs more control over what is included in the diagram
- In multi-package projects, all classes are shown in a single diagram (with no packages).
- The GUI sometimes resizes the window to zero width and zero height.
- The IntelliJ plugin shows just one class at a time.
- Interface methods show as package visibility but should be marked as public.
As an example, the following diagram was generated using the command-line tool from the WeatherStation example used in SWE 2410:
