`netviz version`

Report the netviz, Python and Graphviz versions in use, plus which YAML parser was selected and what the runtime dependencies resolved to. netviz --version prints the same text; this command exists for the --json form, which is what to paste into a bug report.

It needs no inventory and reads no configuration file, so it answers from a directory that holds nothing at all.

Synopsis

netviz [GLOBAL OPTIONS] version [OPTIONS]

Why it reports more than a version

A version number on its own answers almost none of the questions a bug report raises, because nearly every interesting failure in netviz is a failure of something around it:

Graphviz is absent, or is a version whose dot rejects an attribute. Every svg, png, pdf and html render goes through the dot binary, and "installed but not on PATH" is the normal state of Graphviz on Windows.
PyYAML was built without libyaml, so the pure-Python parser is in use. It reports positions differently and is several times slower; which one is active cannot be worked out from a list of installed packages.
The netviz on PATH belongs to an environment nobody meant to be in. The interpreter path is the fastest way to see that.

So the report names all of it. Nothing in it is looked up lazily or guessed: the Graphviz version comes from actually running dot -V on the binary netviz render would use.

What it prints

$ netviz --version
netviz 0.0.3
Python       3.12.3 (CPython) at /usr/local/bin/python3.12
Graphviz     2.43.0 at /usr/bin/dot
Platform     Linux-6.8.0-generic-x86_64-with-glibc2.39
YAML parser  libyaml
Dependencies pydantic 2.13.4, PyYAML 6.0.3, click 8.4.2, networkx 3.6.1, jinja2 3.1.6, watchfiles 1.2.0, ruamel.yaml 0.19.1

The first line is netviz <version> and nothing else, so netviz --version | cut -d' ' -f2 keeps working.

Graphviz has four states, and the line distinguishes them because they need different answers: a version and a path (fine), not found (install it, or set NETVIZ_DOT — the dot, mermaid and json formats still work), or unknown with the reason dot -V gave, which is usually a NETVIZ_DOT pointing at something that is not Graphviz.

The JSON form

$ netviz version --json
{
  "schemaVersion": 1,
  "netviz": "0.0.3",
  "python": {
    "version": "3.12.3",
    "implementation": "CPython",
    "executable": "/usr/local/bin/python3.12"
  },
  "graphviz": {
    "version": "2.43.0",
    "path": "/usr/bin/dot",
    "error": null
  },
  "platform": {
    "description": "Linux-6.8.0-generic-x86_64-with-glibc2.39",
    "system": "Linux",
    "machine": "x86_64",
    "os": "posix"
  },
  "yamlParser": "libyaml",
  "dependencies": {
    "pydantic": "2.13.4",
    "PyYAML": "6.0.3",
    "click": "8.4.2",
    "networkx": "3.6.1",
    "jinja2": "3.1.6",
    "watchfiles": "1.2.0",
    "ruamel.yaml": "0.19.1"
  }
}

graphviz is an object rather than a string because "absent" and "present but unaskable" are different states: version is null in both, and path tells them apart. A null version with a non-null path means error says what went wrong.

schemaVersion follows the same rule as the other JSON documents netviz writes — adding a key does not bump it, changing or removing one does. See docs/releasing.md.

Arguments

Takes no positional arguments.

Options

Flag	Value	Default	Meaning
`--json`	—	off	Emit the report as a JSON object instead of aligned text.

Exit codes

Code	Meaning
`0`	The report was printed. It is `0` even when Graphviz is missing — that is a fact about the installation, not a fault.
`2`	Usage error — an unknown option.
`141`	The downstream end of a pipe closed first.

netviz version