Version 'alpha 1.9.0' brings the beginnings of one of CRANQ's most anticipated features: the ability to see what's happening in the program while it's running.

A while ago we added the output window as a crutch - the bare minimum that we could think of for diagnostics and debugging. To capture traffic on the output window, you have to connect "debug/Logger" nodes to the relevant outputs.

All this time though, we've been building CRANQ with operational transparency in mind. In principle, it's fairly straightforward to visualize traffic in a dataflow graph, but the output window turned out to be handy enough to cover our own needs in most situations. But as CRANQ code gets more complex, using the output window this way gets more uncomfortable. We needed to see activity and traffic without having to modify the dataflow graph. We needed proper instrumentation.

That is what this release is about. While running a CRANQ program from within the app, the runtime sends telemetry to the UI, where activity and last transmitted data turn into tooltip content when hovering over nodes, ports, and connections.

This is a huge step forward for CRANQ.

And more will follow.

‍

Download the new version via the website, and check out the full release notes on our Discord.

‍

- It's all in the connections

Dan