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⁠5.32. Relationship Graphs

MantisBT can display a graphical representation of the relationships between issues. Two types of interactive visualizations are available, dependencies and a full relationships graph.
It is also possible to visualize the Workflow transitions.

Important

This feature relies on the external GraphViz library, which must be installed separately.
Most Linux distributions have a GraphViz package available for easy download and install.
Under Windows, the software needs to be installed manually. The following post-installation steps may be required for proper operations:
  • Update the system PATH to point to GraphViz's bin directory
  • Initialize the graph engine by running dot -c from an Administrator command prompt.
The following Graphviz tools are used:
The webserver must have execute permission to these programs in order to generate the graphs.
$g_relationship_graph_enable
This enables the relationship graphs feature where issues are represented by nodes and relationships as links between such nodes. Possible values are ON or OFF. Default is OFF.
$g_graph_format
Graphviz output format. Can be svg, png (default) or any other supported format.

Note

svg produces higher quality images compared to png, but it requires Graphviz >= 2.42.4 due to a bug in earlier versions. The fix will be included in Ubuntu 26.04 LTS; the default can be reconsidered when it is released.
$g_relationship_graph_fontname
Font name and size, as required by Graphviz. If Graphviz fails to run for you, you are probably using a font name that gd PHP extension can't find. On Linux, try the name of the font file without the extension. The default value is 'Arial'.
$g_relationship_graph_fontsize
Font size, default is 8.
$g_relationship_graph_orientation
Default dependency orientation. If you have issues with lots of children or parents, leave as 'horizontal', otherwise, if you have lots of "chained" issue dependencies, change to 'vertical'. Default is 'horizontal'.
$g_relationship_graph_max_depth
Max depth for relation graphs. This only affects relationship graphs, dependency graphs are drawn to the full depth. The default value is 2.
$g_relationship_graph_view_on_click
If set to ON, clicking on an issue on the relationship graph will open the bug view page for that issue, otherwise, will navigate to the relationship graph for that issue.
$g_graphviz_path
Complete path to the Graphviz tools (for details, see the note at the beginning of Section 5.32, “Relationship Graphs”).
Requires trailing '/'. The default value is /usr/bin/.

Warning

  • The webserver must have execute permission to these programs in order to generate the graphs.
  • On Windows, the IIS user may require permissions to cmd.exe to be able to use PHP's proc_open()
$g_backward_year_count
Number of years in the past that custom date fields will display in drop down boxes.
$g_forward_year_count
Number of years in the future that custom date fields will display in drop down boxes.
$g_custom_group_actions
This extensibility model allows developing new group custom actions. This can be implemented with a totally custom form and action pages or with a pre-implemented form and action page and call-outs to some functions. These functions are to be implemented in a predefined file whose name is based on the action name. For example, for an action to add a note, the action would be EXT_ADD_NOTE and the file implementing it would be bug_actiongroup_add_note_inc.php. See implementation of this file for details.