DFB VS d3-dag

I've used GraphViz a number of times and highly recommend it as a standard tool on your belt. Having a stand-alone executable that can export to SVG is great.

The most complex thing I've done with it [1]: a tool (MIT-license) that builds diagrams of the data and addressing pipeline for a DSP processor, and lets one 'scrub through' the assembler code frame by frame and see the values propagate through the blocks.

Also PlantUML [2] uses it for most diagrams.

Getting layout and positioning the way you want can be tricky but is usually achievable with patience and hidden objects.

[1] https://github.com/paphillips/DFB

It seems that d3-dag implements crossing edge minimization, coordinate assignment, and produces neat DAGs. But it’s implemented in JavaScript.

An alternative to dagre-d3 is d3-dag: https://github.com/erikbrinkman/d3-dag

I've had good success with cytoscapejs as well, integrating with react so the graph will animate layout on transition. I use elk, which is apparently superior to sugiyama (the algorithm graphviz uses for force-directed dag layouts).

I am using something like this https://github.com/erikbrinkman/d3-dag