jGRASP is a lightweight development environment, created specifically to provide automatic generation of software visualizations to improve the comprehensibility of software. jGRASP is implemented in Java, and runs on all platforms with a Java Virtual Machine (Java version 1.5 or higher). jGRASP produces Control Structure Diagrams (CSDs) for Java, C, C++, Objective-C, Ada, and VHDL; Complexity Profile Graphs (CPGs) for Java and Ada; UML class diagrams for Java; and has dynamic object viewers that work in conjunction with an integrated debugger and workbench for Java. The viewers include a data structure identifier mechanism which recognizes objects that represent traditional data structures such as stacks, queues, linked lists, binary trees, and hash tables, and then displays them in an intuitive textbook-like presentation view.

jGRASP is developed by the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering in the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering at Auburn University.

jGRASP 2.0.0 Beta 2 corrects the handling of byte order marks in UTF-encoded files and adds the ability to add or remove a byte order mark when saving files. The structure identifier viewer now allows linked lists, trees, and array-based structures to be shown in the "up" and "left" orientations in addition to "right" and "down", so that a stack, for example, may be displayed in it's natural orientation (growing up).

jGRASP 2.0.0 Beta adds support for Python, including CSD generation for Python. The source code editing windows now support Unicode. The new Viewer Canvas for Java allows multiple viewers to be placed in one window, and the open viewers and viewer settings to be saved to file and to persist between debugging sessions.

In jGRASP version 1.8.8_12, the CSD and interactions have been updated for new Java 7 features. Minor problems with Java 7 and Mac OS X Lion have been fixed. Alt-arrow key combinations are now shortcuts for debug operations (see the new "Debug" menu while debugging for the mappings). There are numerous other usability improvements and minor bug fixes.

jGRASP version 1.8.8 introduces a JUnit plugin, Web-CAT plugin, and plugin status flags in the project pane (status for Checkstyle and JUnit is currently shown). Mouse clicking in the CSD window has been changed from on-character to the more common between-character style.

jGRASP version 1.8.7_08 enables some minor features that were previously disabled on 64-bit Windows. It also works more smoothly with the Vista/Windows 7 taskbar.

jGRASP version 1.8.7 introduces an interpreter-like "interactions" window for Java.

The development of jGRASP has been supported by a research grant from the National Science Foundation.

The development of previous versions of GRASP was supported by research grants from NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, the Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), and the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA).