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Thursday 10 February 2011

BoUML: A usable UML editor for Linux

I bet you've heard it before, some people actually document their projects. Crazy, I know. UML is the tool of choice this days, and a lot of bad applications exist to make your life misserable with half implementations of a half standard language, and random crashes sprinkled here and there to keep you alert and saving at all times (I'm looking at you, Umbrello).

In Linux finding a decent UML application has been quite a difficult task, but after working with BoUML for quite some time I can say this tool, although not without its quircks, certainly meets my acceptance criteria [1].

BoUML, though a little bit unintuitive at first, is quite easy to use. Unlike most UML applications, this one workes closer to a CASE tool, so everything will have to be organized in packages. As a quickstart, create a class view and a class diagram inside that one, but you should really check the official manual. It'll save you a lot of grief, trust me.

On the downside, BoUML is not quite so good for free-style UML, so making a collaboration diagram with network symbols is impossible. I can live with that, Dia is a nice complement for free-style diagrams (it does work... though the result is uglier than an the dog at the end of this post).

[1] WTF after so many years of really bad applications my "acceptance criteria" has fallen so low that "stable" almost equals "good"...

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