For those of you who don't know, Diver is a research project of the CHISEL group at the University of Victoria. We are trying to find better ways to help programmers develop, debug, and understand their software. Diver does this by bringing some techniques from reverse engineering into your Eclipse IDE. It can generate execution traces of your software which it uses to adjust the UI of your IDE to draw your attention to the features of your software that you are looking for. Diver is the product of several years of research and development, so it is feature-rich and robust. You can find out more about Diver at our website: http://diver.sf.net
OK, that's enough of the sell... I should let you know what you get with this new version of Diver.
| Faster Tracing | The tracer has been optimized. Tests indicate that it is between 2 and 4 times faster than version 0.1.0 |
| Capture Screenshots | You can now save screenshots of your sequence diagram. Select the "camera"  icon,and you will be able to save an image of the main pane of the sequence diagram as a PNG, JPG, or BMP.  |
| Exporting Traces | Diver is now able to export a complete trace to be shared with your collegues.  |
| Importing Traces | If you can export, you have to be able to import. Use the import trace wizard to open a Diver Trace (dvt) file. The file will be imported and analyzed just as if you ran the trace yourself.  |
| Filtering Empty Threads | Diver keeps a record for all threads in your traces, even if no events occur in them. In previous versions, this could cause a lot of clutter in the Program Traces view. Now, you can filter empty threads and get rid of the clutter.  |
| Marking Code Executed in Jar Files | In previous versions, it wasn't possible to view executed lines of code in .class files contained in Jars because of limitations in Eclipse's Resource framework. So, I used Diver to figure out how the JDT sets breakpoints in Jar files, and I was able to use what I found to add markers to Jar files for use within Diver.  |
| Toggle Combied Fragments and Loops | If, for some reason (and I don't know what that would be :-) ), you don't like seeing your sequence diagram decorated with source code information, you can shut off combined fragments and loop compaction.  |
| Exceptions | If a method returns due to an exception, it is now indicated in the sequence diagram.  |
| Diver Research | Diver is a research project at the University of Victoria. Diver now makes it easier for you to help us with our research by logging information about how you use it. You can automatically upload these logs to our server, or you can shut off logging using the Workbench Logger preference page  |
If you already have Diver installed, you should be able to get the new version just by updating your Eclipse. Otherwise, you can use our p2 repository site: https://diver.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/diver/Release.
I hope that this new version will be useful to everyone. I've put a lot of hard work into it. It's 100% open source, so its free to you. But, please remember that Diver is a research project, so help me out with my research. Use it for a while, and then fill out our survey. Also, this new version of Diver has a logging feature that will keep track of some of your interactions with Diver. It's all anonymous information, and you can turn it off at any time (using the Workbench Logger) preference page. We don't get the data unless you explicitly agree to send it to us (Diver will ask you permission before uploading). But, please participate. I have to graduate sometime ;-).
Anyway, happy coding!
