Hey Friends!

I wanted to announce the next release of Visualixir, the somewhat amusing cluster visualizer, version 0.1.99999999.

You can now visualize your entire cluster and watch multiple “conversations” between your processes, all in a single flat space. Huge gifs incoming!

I think it’s really valuable when you’re teaching Elixir/BEAM concepts to show folks a visual representation of their cluster/nodes, the interconnected supervisions trees, as well as showing conversations happening between processes in real time.

I’ve been hacking on this on and off over the last year or so, and I’m entering a busy part of my life, so I wont be able to tend to it as much as I’d like, but I wanted to put it in your hands rather than let it rot in obscurity.

It’s about as far from perfect as it can be, in fact, it can be downright frustrating to chase processes around. The code is prototype grade, but if you fancy working on it, I absolutely welcome PRs. There are a couple of spots that might be fun to hack on:

• Interpreting OTP messages in conversations, rather than just showing raw contents.
• Moving from SVG to WebGL.
• Rewriting d3’s force-directed graph and convex hull algorithms in Elixir, to port to LiveView.
• Adding the ability to resize and close conversations.
• Adding a “freeze” button to make chasing down processes less annoying.
• Adding a search box to find processes.
• Bug fixes!

I hope it proves of some use!