I use NetworkX rather unusually to parse Graphviz dot specification files in my devops pipeline tool, mazzle.

They allow me to define infrastructure build instructions as a dot file that looks similar to this. It's similar to an advanced makefile.

This segment of the infrastructure specification sets a dependency on the bastion box, the vault AMI (Amazon Machine Image) and web server provisioned by terraform on the source AMI. Then it sets a dependency of uploading nodejs to the repository server and a dependency on dpkg scan packages. It also tells machines to join themselves to a Kubernetes cluster.

  digraph G {
    label="pipeline";
    rankdir=TB;



  "packer/source-ami*" -> { "terraform/bastion";
                          "packer/vault-ami*";
                          "terraform/web"
                        }

  "terraform/bastion" -> "@repository-upload/nodejs_12.13.1_amd64"
  "terraform/repository" -> "@repository-upload/nodejs_12.13.1_amd64"

  "@repository-upload/nodejs_12.13.1_amd64" -> "@shell/dpkg-scanpackages"

  "terraform/web" -> "@ansible/kubernetes-join";
  "terraform/bastion" -> "@ansible/kubernetes-join";
  "terraform/services" -> "@ansible/kubernetes-join";
  "@ansible/kubernetes" -> "@ansible/kubernetes-join";

   ...

   }

Graph formats are really flexible and compact and I would like to see them used for more things.

A topological search solves many problems.

https://devops-pipeline.com/