Query not generating the graph correctly

Question

Hi,

 

I am running the following query on our installation of PlantUML

@startuml

participant Alice

participant Bob

autonumber

Alice -> Bob: OK?

Bob -> Alice: Yep

autonumber stop

opt Optional

Alice ->  Alice: Rawr

end opt

autonumber resume

Alice ->  Bob: OK?

Bob -> Alice: Yep

@enduml

The graphic for the above file is not getting generated correctly. It does say 'skipping 3 lines' at one point and at another point is says 'Syntax error? autonumber -> stop'

Can someone help with this. Would have helped if I could upload the graphic that is generated but can't seem to do it here.

Answer 1

Hi,

Your version of PlantUML is probably too old. Your example is working on the online server:

http://www.plantuml.com/plantuml/png/VOyn3iCm24LtJi45Ue4CRPgrGwHk7Kd2OCasoCRgzKiYLNMNJC3d_OyOgr6nbYAerx06fMnuZs7bFsMI1QYPv9OMBd00UBdk-e3pumRUxFEn6F35sk5OJHH43MUr89dYB-3hUDAx0ESD7UkjXMjBtF4d5qVt-oiV

You can check your version of PlantUML with current diagram:

@startuml
version
@enduml

Regards,

Comments

Hi

Thank you for your response.

The version is 8022, which is probably not that old, because we implemented it in May this year. Could the character set setting be an issue?

We are running Graphviz 2.26.0 with the current version of PlantUML. If we are to upgrade to a higher version say 8029, would the Graphviz have to be upgraded too?

---

Well, this feature has been added in June. So you have to upgrade to 8029.

Graphviz 2.26.0 will work fine with 8029, so you don't have to upgrade Graphviz.

Just make a back of plantuml.jar (8022) in case you have to cancel your upgrade, but everything should be fine.

---

Thank you very much for your responses. I will proceed with the upgrade as suggested.

BTW, what should be a normal frequency for upgrading PlantUML? Quarterly should do it?

Regards
Debrup

---

Yes, quaterly should be fine. New releases (1 to 4 per month) brings new features and bug fixes.
We really want to keep ascending compatibility, so new releases should not break existing diagrams (if they did, it's a bug).

---

Hi

This may be a daft question, but I cannot see the war file for any of the downloads. Is it just the jar file that I need to replace on PlantUML? Or is there a location from where I can explicitly download the war file for PlantUML 8029?

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The war file is on the page http://plantuml.com/download.html (section Java J2EE WAR File). The direct link is http://sourceforge.net/projects/plantuml/files/plantuml.war/download

We know that the site design is not very good :-)

---

Hi

Thanks for getting back. I had downloaded the same earlier, but on unzipping it, I get a plantuml folder but not war file specifically. Should the approach to doing the upgrade be the following:

1. Shutdown Tomcat
2. Remove the existing plantuml.war file
3. Extract the downloaded plantuml.zip file to the same folder to overwrite the existing plantuml folder
4. Start the Tomcat and it will then create the war file

Regards

---

Is plantuml.jar the only file that needs to be changed to upgrade PlantUML? In that case, we can just shut tomcat, remove the existing plantuml.war file, overwrite the existing plantuml.jar with the new plantuml.jar and restart Tomcat?

---

No, the upgrade does not work that way. You have to:

1. Shutdown Tomcat
2. Replace the existing plantuml.war with the new plantuml.war
3. Restart Tomcat.

Do not unzip yourself plantuml.war : Tomcat will detect at startup that plantuml.war file has been changed and will unzip it by itself.
(see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5109112/how-to-deploy-a-war-file-in-tomcat-7 )

Does it work better this way ?

---

Hi

This is done. I followed the steps as given below

1. Stopped Tomcat
2. Copied the plantuml.zip file which I downloaded to the Tomcat Apps folder
3. Renamed the existing plantum.war and plantuml folder as plantuml.war_8022 and plantuml_8022 and moved them to a separate location called Older versions
4. Renamed plantuml.zip as plantuml.war
5. Restarted Tomcat

Thank you for all your help with this.