PlantUML Macro Diagram Type Issues (Local Execution)

Help / Discuss
1

We don’t use an external PlantUML server and are using PlantUML Macro 2.3.2 with XWiki 16.10.5 LTS on a Debian 12 “Bookworm” server:

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image1510×480 52.6 KB

# dpkg -l | egrep graphvi
ii  graphviz                                2.42.2-7+deb12u1                        amd64        rich set of graph drawing tools

I probably misconfigured something, as for many diagram types I just get an error message that the type is not known.

On https://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/PlantUML%20Macro#HUsage it states:

(I had to remove the at signs with placeholders, as Discourse thought I wanted to mention tons of users…)

The content of the macro can refer to any of the following diagram types supported by PlantUML :

  • PlantUML (diagrams starting with [at]startuml)
  • DITAA (diagams starting with [at]startditaa)
  • GraphViz (diagrams starting with [at]startdot)
  • JCCKIT (diagrams starting with [at]startjcckit)
  • Salt (diagrams starting with [at]startsalt)
  • Mind maps (diagrams starting with [at]startmindmap)
  • Regexes (diagrams starting with [at]startregex)
  • Gantt (diagrams starting with [at]startgantt)
  • Chronology (diagrams starting with [at]startchronology)
  • Work breakdown structures (diagrams starting with [at]startwbs)
  • EBNF (diagrams starting with [at]startebnf)
  • JSON (diagrams starting with [at]startjson)
  • YAML (diagrams starting with [at]startyaml)

(I’m using a proper at sign in the actual code of course, see below.)

However, using the simplest e.g. WBS macro from the PlantUML documentation:

{{plantuml}}
@startwbs
* Business Process Modelling WBS
** Launch the project
*** Complete Stakeholder Research
*** Initial Implementation Plan
** Design phase
*** Model of AsIs Processes Completed
**** Model of AsIs Processes Completed1
**** Model of AsIs Processes Completed2
*** Measure AsIs performance metrics
*** Identify Quick Wins
** Complete innovate phase
@endwbs
{{/plantuml}}

yields:

image

What am I doing wrong?

2

I tried it, both with PlantUML macro 2.3.2 and 2.4.0, and I can’t reproduce, the example displays well on my end

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Might seem obvious, but are you sure that your current macro content is exactly what you pasted here and that nothing was (weirdly) escaped? You can check by looking at the source editor.

3

Yes, positive:

image

{{plantuml}}
@startwbs
* Business Process Modelling WBS
** Launch the project
*** Complete Stakeholder Research
*** Initial Implementation Plan
** Design phase
*** Model of AsIs Processes Completed
**** Model of AsIs Processes Completed1
**** Model of AsIs Processes Completed2
*** Measure AsIs performance metrics
*** Identify Quick Wins
** Complete innovate phase
@endwbs
{{/plantuml}}

Did you really use local diagram generation, not server based?

I quickly tried to get a docker based Xwiki running on my local machine to cross check with a fresh install, but couldn’t get it to start immediately and currently don’t have time to tinker much with it unfortunately…

Does anyone know if there is any self contained docker image with hsqldb or something which I can just pull and run for a throwaway test instance? As far as I understood the available images, they all require some external DB server images and use Docker Compose, which I then tried to use, but it failed to initialize. (Could not reach / resolve the mariadb container.)

4

PlantUML 1.2023.9 + PlantUML Macro 2.3.2 (no PlantUML Administration though) on XWiki 16.10.4, Tomcat 9 under Ubuntu 22 and no custom config (that I can remember or find in XWiki cfg files).

Works as expected.

5

Just updated to 2.4, works aswell.

But under https://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/PlantUML%20Macro#HConfiguration it states:

Another option is to leave the PlantUML server field empty, in which case the macro will use PlantUML in embedded mode (you’ll then need to have GraphViz installed to generate all diagrams except for the Sequence one).

Maybe you have that property specified but empty, whereas we do not have it at all, hence it works for us because it uses the online PlantUML server?

6

Ok, found the issue - apparently in 2018 I manually installed a plantuml.jar into the /usr/lib/xwiki/WEB-INF/lib directory… :man_facepalming:

I can’t remember why, maybe it was necessary back then?

In any case, it seems to have been located in the classpath before the JAR from the plugin (it actually makes sense that a plugin cannot not overwrite permanently installed JARs, from a security perspective) and thus prevented the use of a newer PlantUML version…

After I moved it away, the organisation chart and network structure diagrams work like a charm, generated locally in our wiki…

Sorry for the noise. :frowning:

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