Show HN: Create diagrams stitching images on a grid using HCL (like Terraform) | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Create diagrams stitching images on a grid using HCL (like Terraform)

github.com

40 pointslucasepe12 comments

Nice project. Thanks for sharing. One more for my collection.

I already use Monodraw [1] which works great to document stuff in code.

Runway [2] and Diagrams [3] for my presentations and README files.

And recently, I’ve been using mingrammer’s Diagrams Python tool [4]. I am very excited about this pull-request on GitHub [5] where some people are creating a web wrapper in Flask around this project so that we can generate the diagrams à la http://webgraphviz.com which is quite similar to established products like Draw.io [6] and CloudCraft [7]. Someone also posted about InfraMap [8] a couple of days ago [9] and I’ve noticed the developers have made several improvements to the graphs in the last couple of days.

I hope Jumble’s developer gets good feedback too.

I’d recommend replacing the GIF with static images or at least put a progress bar (here [10] is a program written in Go to do that) because it is very difficult to understand the first time what is happening in the animation with all the code-to-graph-and-back-to-code jump cuts.

Keep up the good work.

[1] https://monodraw.helftone.com

[2] http://celestialteapot.com/runway/

[3] https://diagrams.app

[4] https://github.com/mingrammer/diagrams

[5] https://github.com/mingrammer/diagrams/pull/201

[6] http://draw.io

[7] https://cloudcraft.co

[8] https://github.com/cycloidio/inframap

[9] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23860701

[10] https://github.com/nwtgck/gif-progress

I so agree with that last paragraph. I just saw a blank grid and was about to close it and comment about maybe posting an example image and then I realised that the animation slowly built up the image... Even then, though, I just wanted to see the end result not wait for the step by step.

Hi! Thank you very much! And thanks for the hints about the GIF! I'm writing docs and more samples and with the next release I'll replace the GIF with docs and static images.

Cool! I recently started using graphviz for my diagrams and while I do like it a lot, there are a lot of scenarios where it just doesn't do what I want and there appears to be no way to make it do what I want. Jumble seems to make an interesting tradeoff compared to graphviz in that it's less automatic but you have more control over your final diagram. I'll bookmark this for my next diagram!

Thank you! I had the same problem with Graphviz (if you are curious and have time, check my other experiment 'draft' it uses graphviz. Right now with 'jumble' I'm able to draw all kinds of architectures. I'm using Jumble also to merge different architecture patterns.

This is my problem too

I like Nomad, which also uses HCL, but why would you use it for anything else? Serious question, it's not a common choice.

It could quite easily be the only declarative language someone was familiar with (or the one most familiar, or the one thought to be most familiar to potential users).

Agree it's not common, don't think I've ever seen it in a non-Hashicorp project, but then declarative languages aren't (relatively!) common.

Alternate tongue-in-cheek answer: if you want a job at Hashicorp? (Or tongue-out-of-cheek: you already work at Hashicorp and are very familiat with it, or looking for a pet project to get very familiar with it.)

Would be interested to hear OP's actual reason though, I'm not criticising the question.

Hi! :) thanks!

I don't work for Hascicorp and no I'm not looking for jobs right now.

I'm really really curious... a lot!

I was fashinated about how terraform does it's magic, so I studied terraform source code (just the part related to Hcl).

I like the idea to write a custom declarative language, with expressions and custom function.

As side project (just for fun) I'm writing a 2D Cad all with custom Hcl directives and geometric functions (intersections etc.).

Since for my job I need to draw and change..a lot.. solution architectures diagrams... so the Jumble idea was born.

All the best, Luca

Neat idea, but I initially thought it might be like dot/graphviz for reading your TF configs and automatically diagramming them.. would be an interesting idea, considering TF has some awareness of dependencies (though maybe not app/data flow)

There is a command called “terraform graph” which can do this. Apologies if I have misunderstood your post.

Pretty neat, now if it could do Grafana dashboards I'd be perfect.

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