Information if you are new to Rigi:
Purpose
Rigi is a
ReverseEngineering environment. It consists of a set of tools: parsers, command-line utilities, and an interactive graph editor. The core of the system is the graph editor,
RigiEdit, and most people that are interested in Rigi are actually interested in the graph editor. (In fact, the parsers are no longer supported.)
Rigi is a system for understanding large information spaces such as software programs, documentation, and the World Wide Web. This is done through a reverse engineering approach that models the system by extracting artifacts from the information space, organizing them into higher level abstractions such as components, and presenting the model graphically with
RigiEdit.The choice of abstraction depends on its intended function, the intended audience, the application area, and the goals of the modeling exercise.
If you want to dive deeper, check out the
RigiPublications. A good starting point is
Structural redocumentation: a case study (
IEEE Software, January 1995):
Downloading Rigi and Getting the Rigi User Manual
To try out Rigi you can download a precompiled version of Rigi; look at
RigiReleases. To play around with Rigi and to run some demos you only need
RigiEdit. If you are a developer and work with the sources look at
RigiDevelopment.
Also download the
RigiUserManual!
Installing Rigi
Installing
RigiEdit basically means that you have to extract the contents of the archive (ZIP, tar, etc.) into a new directory. This directory is referred to as
$RIGI
.
See
RigiInstall for additional help if you run into problems.
Linux with (ba)sh:
> mkdir rigibase
> cd rigibase
> export RIGI=`pwd`
> export PATH=$RIGI/bin:$PATH
> wget http://www.rigi.cs.uvic.ca/downloads/rigi/ix86-linux2/rigiedit-12-Jan-2003-bin.tar.gz
> gunzip rigiedit-12-Jan-2003-bin.tar.gz
> tar xvf rigiedit-12-Jan-2003-bin.tar
To set the environment variables RIGI and
PATH for tcsh, replace the above two lines with:
> setenv RIGI `pwd`
> set path=($RIGI/bin$path)
Windows:
You need to set the following system environment variables:
Variable | Example |
TK_LIBRARY | %RIGI%\lib\tk8.4 |
TCL_LIBRARY | %RIGI%\lib\tcl8.4 |
RIGI | C:\Rigi |
Path | %RIGI%\bin |
You can include the following lines into the
autoexec.bat
:
rem following lines are related to RIGI
set RIGI=c:/rigi
set TCL_LIBRARY=%RIGI%/lib/tcl7.4
set TK_LIBRARY=%RIGI%/lib/tk4.0
path=%path%;%RIGI%\bin
Running Rigi
The binary of
RigiEdit is located at
$RIGI/bin/rigiedit
.
If you execute the binary, you should initially see the Rigi Workbench window and an empty root window.
When you start up
RigiEdit, it checks for the configuration file
rigicfg.env
in the current working directory. If the file does not exist
RigiEdit creates the file with the default settings.
Linux:
> cd $RIGI/bin/
> ./rigiedit &
Welcome to RigiEdit Version 12-Jan-2003
Copyright 1986-1998,
H.A. Muller, University of Victoria, All rights reserved
Configuration used: .../bin/rigicfg.env
> cat rigicfg.env
Windows:
Start
RigiEdit by opening up the
"Run..." dialog and then typing in
rigiedit
. This will only work if the
path
system environment variable is set correctly (see above).
Alternatively, you use the Explorer to navigate to the
rigiedit
binary and double-click on it.
Rigi's Demos
The easiest way to get a first understanding of Rigi's capabilities is running the built-in demos. In the Rigi Workbench use the "Demo" drop-down menu to select between three demos. More details are in the
RigiUserManual, Chapter 2.
CategoryRigi