Compile Finite State Machine to UML(-like) Diagram

Question

Every Python developer knows tools like Sphinx. You write some text in a markup language, write make in the shell and let some compilers do their job. In the end you get beautiful HTML or PDF.

I am looking for something like that, just for Finite State Machines, e.g. I put SCXML into a file (with a GUI or manually with VIM as I desire) start a compiler and out comes a picture file format that i can use however I please and that looks good even if I don't know what I am doing. Example:

$ vim my-fsm.scxml
$ scxml2svg my-fsm.scxml
writing file...
finished writing my-fsm.svg
$

The closest I got so far is using various Eclipse plugins (years ago, dislike huge IDEs), draw.io or what I am using now: Umlet. Even Umlet has problems, though. For example it doesn't support the workflow I am used to (write text files, start compiler, see beautiful result). The results are often also suboptimal, because the engine is actually quite simple. But everywhere I look for a more useful alternative (python wiki, other SO questions, tools) I still don't find a simple compiler.

Now I would be really happy if anybody would know such a compiler. If not possible a FOSS GUI editors with PNG/SVG export would also be okay.

Answer 1

GraphViz has a file format which can be written manually and compiled to different picture formats.

Answer 2

I wrote some tools to do this: http://goo.gl/V97ft