Debug Plotter

This crate provides a convenient macro to quickly plot variables.

Documentation

For more information on how to use this crate, please take a look at the documentation or the examples.

Usage

An Example

In this example, we quickly want to plot the variables a, b, and c. Optionally, we can name the plot. Plots are saved as a PNG image in the plots directory that is created in the working directory.

fn main() {
    for a in 0usize..10usize {
        let b = (a as f32 / 2.0).sin() * 10.0;
        let c = 5 - (a as i32);

        debug_plotter::plot!(a, b, c where caption = "My Plot");
    }
}

The example above generates a plot named "My Plot" and saves it to 'plots/My_Plot.png`.

Additional Use Cases

The macro takes a list of variables. By default, the value of the variable is mapped to the y axis, and the x axis shows the iteration number.

debug_plotter::plot!(a, b, c);

It is possible to pass a tuple if you want the x axis to be another value instead of the iteration number.

debug_plotter::plot!((x, a), (x, b), (x, c));

It is also possible to rename variables in the legend using the keyword as.

debug_plotter::plot!(a as "Alice", b as "Bob", c as "Charlie");

It is possible to provide additional options for the plot after a where keyword.

debug_plotter::plot!(a, b, c where caption = "My Caption");

The following table lists all available options.

Identifier	Example Value	Description
`caption`	`"caption"`	Sets the caption of the plot.
`size`	`(400, 300)`	Sets the size of the resulting image or window.
`x_desc`	`"x description"`	Sets the description of the x axis.
`y_desc`	`"y description"`	Sets the description of the y axis.
`path`	`"/plots/my_plot.jpg"`	Defines where the plot is saved.
`x_range`	`0f64..100f64`	Defines start and end of the x axis.
`y_range`	`0f64..100f64`	Defines start and end of the y axis.
`values`	`1000usize`	Defines the maximal number of values that are stored. If the macro is called more times than this number, the oldest value is dropped.
`live`	`true`	Enables live mode which opens the plot in a window with live updates.

Features Overview

The following table lists all available features.

Feature	Description
`debug`	Enabled by default, disable to avoid compiling the dependencies in release mode.
`plot-release`	Disabled by default, enable to start plotting in release mode.
`live`	Enabled by default, enables live debugging by opening a window when passing `live = true` to the `plot!` macro.

Debug and Release Mode

Variables are only plotted if your code is run in debug mode. In release mode, plot! macros are ignored. If you want to avoid compiling the dependencies for this crate in release mode, add --no-default-features. If you want to plot variables in release mode, use the feature plot-release.

Comments

No output when using plot macro in tests.

I've been trying to use debug_plotter::plot!() in one of my tests, but I don't get any output. Am I doing something wrong ? It compiles and runs fine otherwise ...

Best, N

opened by the-drunk-coder 5
Macro is unusable without declaring your own feature flags
Currently,

#[cfg(any(debug_assertions,feature = "plot-release"))] #[cfg(feature = "debug")]

is emitted from the macro, meaning that the crate that uses it has to define/activate these features rather than debug-plotter itself.

I think this might also relate to #2, as I've seen the same "unused variable" message in rust-analyzer until I added plot-release and debug as feature flags to my crate instead.
opened by seritools 3
Unable to follow basic example

Using vscode with rust_analyzer, the macro doesn't appear to be recognizing the variables passed in.

There also appear to be typos in the docs, (missing ! to designate the macro calls)

There is no output, and no runtime errors when executed with cargo run

opened by zshift 3
Add missing conditional compiler macros

Since the piston dependency is now out of date I had to disable it via default_features = false for now in my Cargo.toml but ran into some errors due to conditionally compiling without it. Here are the missing macros. Note that someone should update the piston backend code so that the live feature works again.

opened by toastmod 1