/****************************************************************************** * * * * Copyright (C) 1997-2008 by Dimitri van Heesch. * * Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its * documentation under the terms of the GNU General Public License is hereby * granted. No representations are made about the suitability of this software * for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty. * See the GNU General Public License for more details. * * Documents produced by Doxygen are derivative works derived from the * input used in their production; they are not affected by this license. * */ /*! \page docblocks Documenting the code \section specialblock Special documentation blocks A special documentation block is a C or C++ style comment block with some additional markings, so doxygen knows it is a piece of documentation that needs to end up in the generated documentation. For Python and VHDL code there are a different comment conventions, which can be found in section \ref pythonblocks and \ref vhdlblocks respectively. For each code item there are two (or in some cases three) types of descriptions, which together form the documentation: a \e brief description and \e detailed description, both are optional. For methods and functions there is also a third type of description, the so called "in body" description, which consists of the concatenation of all comment blocks found within the body of the method or function. Having more than one brief or detailed description is allowed (but not recommended, as the order in which the descriptions will appear is not specified). As the name suggest, a brief description is a short one-liner, whereas the detailed description provides longer, more detailed documentation. An "in body" description can also act as a detailed description or can describe a collection of implementation details. For the HTML output brief descriptions are also use to provide tooltips at places where an item is referenced. There are several ways to mark a comment block as a detailed description:
  1. You can use the JavaDoc style, which consist of a C-style comment block starting with two *'s, like this: \verbatim /** * ... text ... */ \endverbatim
  2. or you can use the Qt style and add an exclamation mark (!) after the opening of a C-style comment block, as shown in this example: \verbatim /*! * ... text ... */ \endverbatim In both cases the intermediate *'s are optional, so \verbatim /*! ... text ... */ \endverbatim is also valid.
  3. A third alternative is to use a block of at least two C++ comment lines, where each line starts with an additional slash or an exclamation mark. Here are examples of the two cases: \verbatim /// /// ... text ... /// \endverbatim or \verbatim //! //!... text ... //! \endverbatim
  4. Some people like to make their comment blocks more visible in the documentation. For this purpose you can use the following: \verbatim /********************************************//** * ... text ***********************************************/ \endverbatim (note the 2 slashes to end the normal comment block and start a special comment block). or \verbatim ///////////////////////////////////////////////// /// ... text ... ///////////////////////////////////////////////// \endverbatim
For the brief description there are also several posibilities:
  1. One could use the \ref cmdbrief "\\brief" command with one of the above comment blocks. This command ends at the end of a paragraph, so the detailed description follows after an empty line. Here is an example: \verbatim /*! \brief Brief description. * Brief description continued. * * Detailed description starts here. */ \endverbatim
  2. If \ref cfg_javadoc_autobrief "JAVADOC_AUTOBRIEF" is set to \c YES in the configuration file, then using JavaDoc style comment blocks will automatically start a brief description which ends at the first dot followed by a space or new line. Here is an example: \verbatim /** Brief description which ends at this dot. Details follow * here. */ \endverbatim The option has the same effect for multi-line special C++ comments: \verbatim /// Brief description which ends at this dot. Details follow /// here. \endverbatim
  3. A third option is to use a special C++ style comment which does not span more than one line. Here are two examples: \verbatim /// Brief description. /** Detailed description. */ \endverbatim or \verbatim //! Brief descripion. //! Detailed description //! starts here. \endverbatim Note the blank line in the last example, which is required to separate the brief description from the block containing the detailed description. The \ref cfg_javadoc_autobrief "JAVADOC_AUTOBRIEF" should also be set to \c NO for this case.
As you can see doxygen is quite flexible. If you have multiple detailed descriptions, like in the following example: \verbatim //! Brief description, which is //! really a detailed description since it spans multiple lines. /*! Another detailed description! */ \endverbatim They will be joined. Note that this is also the case if the descriptions are at different places in the code! In this case the order will depend on the order in which doxygen parses the code. Here is an example of a documented piece of C++ code using the Qt style: \include qtstyle.cpp \htmlonly Click here for the corresponding HTML documentation that is generated by doxygen. \endhtmlonly The one-line comments contain a brief description, whereas the multi-line comment blocks contain a more detailed description. The brief descriptions are included in the member overview of a class, namespace or file and are printed using a small italic font (this description can be hidden by setting \ref cfg_brief_member_desc "BRIEF_MEMBER_DESC" to \c NO in the config file). By default the brief descriptions become the first sentence of the detailed descriptions (but this can be changed by setting the \ref cfg_repeat_brief "REPEAT_BRIEF" tag to \c NO). Both the brief and the detailed descriptions are optional for the Qt style. By default a JavaDoc style documentation block behaves the same way as a Qt style documentation block. This is not according the JavaDoc specification however, where the first sentence of the documentation block is automatically treated as a brief description. To enable this behaviour you should set \ref cfg_javadoc_autobrief "JAVADOC_AUTOBRIEF" to YES in the configuration file. If you enable this option and want to put a dot in the middle of a sentence without ending it, you should put a backslash and a space after it. Here is an example: \verbatim /** Brief description (e.g.\ using only a few words). Details follow. */ \endverbatim Here is the same piece of code as shown above, this time documented using the JavaDoc style and \ref cfg_javadoc_autobrief "JAVADOC_AUTOBRIEF" set to YES: \include jdstyle.cpp \htmlonly Click here for the corresponding HTML documentation that is generated by doxygen. \endhtmlonly Similarly, if one wishes the first sentence of a Qt style documentation block to automatically be treated as a brief description, one may set \ref cfg_qt_autobrief "QT_AUTOBRIEF" to YES in the configuration file. Unlike most other documentation systems, doxygen also allows you to put the documentation of members (including global functions) in front of the \e definition. This way the documentation can be placed in the source file instead of the header file. This keeps the header file compact, and allows the implementer of the members more direct access to the documentation. As a compromise the brief description could be placed before the declaration and the detailed description before the member definition. \section memberdoc Putting documentation after members If you want to document the members of a file, struct, union, class, or enum, and you want to put the documentation for these members inside the compound, it is sometimes desired to place the documentation block after the member instead of before. For this purpose you have to put an additional \< marker in the comment block. Note that this also works for the parameters of a function. Here are some examples: \verbatim int var; /*!< Detailed description after the member */ \endverbatim This block can be used to put a Qt style detailed documentation block \e after a member. Other ways to do the same are: \verbatim int var; /**< Detailed description after the member */ \endverbatim or \verbatim int var; //!< Detailed description after the member //!< \endverbatim or \verbatim int var; ///< Detailed description after the member ///< \endverbatim Most often one only wants to put a brief description after a member. This is done as follows: \verbatim int var; //!< Brief description after the member \endverbatim or \verbatim int var; ///< Brief description after the member \endverbatim Note that these blocks have the same structure and meaning as the special comment blocks in the previous section only the \< indicates that the member is located in front of the block instead of after the block. Here is an example of the use of these comment blocks: \include afterdoc.h \htmlonly Click here for the corresponding HTML documentation that is generated by doxygen. \endhtmlonly \warning These blocks can only be used to document \e members and \e parameters. They cannot be used to document files, classes, unions, structs, groups, namespaces and enums themselves. Furthermore, the structural commands mentioned in the next section (like \\class) are ignored inside these comment blocks. \section structuralcommands Documentation at other places So far we have assumed that the documentation blocks are always located \e in \e front of the declaration or definition of a file, class or namespace or in front or after one of its members. Although this is often comfortable, there may sometimes be reasons to put the documentation somewhere else. For documenting a file this is even required since there is no such thing as "in front of a file". Doxygen allows you to put your documentation blocks practically anywhere (the exception is inside the body of a function or inside a normal C style comment block). The price you pay for not putting the documentation block directly before (or after) an item is the need to put a structural command inside the documentation block, which leads to some duplication of information. So in practice you should \e avoid the use of structural commands \e unless other requirements force you to do so. Structural commands (like all other commands) start with a backslash (\\), or an at-sign (\@) if you prefer JavaDoc style, followed by a command name and one or more parameters. For instance, if you want to document the class \c Test in the example above, you could have also put the following documentation block somewhere in the input that is read by doxygen: \verbatim /*! \class Test \brief A test class. A more detailed class description. */ \endverbatim Here the special command \c \\class is used to indicate that the comment block contains documentation for the class \c Test. Other structural commands are: See section \ref commands for detailed information about these and many other commands. To document a member of a C++ class, you must also document the class itself. The same holds for namespaces. To document a global C function, typedef, enum or preprocessor definition you must first document the file that contains it (usually this will be a header file, because that file contains the information that is exported to other source files). Let's repeat that, because it is often overlooked: to document global objects (functions, typedefs, enum, macros, etc), you must document the file in which they are defined. In other words, there must at least be a \verbatim /*! \file */ \endverbatim or a \verbatim /** @file */ \endverbatim line in this file. Here is an example of a C header named \c structcmd.h that is documented using structural commands: \include structcmd.h \htmlonly Click here for the corresponding HTML documentation that is generated by doxygen. \endhtmlonly Because each comment block in the example above contains a structural command, all the comment blocks could be moved to another location or input file (the source file for instance), without affecting the generated documentation. The disadvantage of this approach is that prototypes are duplicated, so all changes have to be made twice! Because of this you should first consider if this is really needed, and avoid structural commands if possible. I often receive examples that contain \\fn command in comment blocks which are place in front of a function. This is clearly a case where the \\fn command is redundant and will only lead to problems. \section pythonblocks Special documentation blocks in Python For Python there is a standard way of documenting the code using so called documentation strings. Such strings are stored in \c __doc__ and can be retrieved at runtime. Doxygen will extract such comments and assume they have to be represented in a preformatted way. \include docstring.py \htmlonly Click here for the corresponding HTML documentation that is generated by doxygen. \endhtmlonly Note that in this case none of doxygen's \ref cmd_intro "special commands" are supported. There is also another way to document Python code using comments that start with "##". These type of comment blocks are more in line with the way documentation blocks work for the other languages supported by doxygen and this also allows the use of special commands. Here is the same example again but now using doxygen style comments: \include pyexample.py \htmlonly Click here for the corresponding HTML documentation that is generated by doxygen. \endhtmlonly Since python looks more like Java than like C or C++, you should set \ref cfg_optimize_output_java "OPTMIZE_OUTPUT_JAVA" to \c YES in the config file. \htmlonly Go to the next section or return to the index. \endhtmlonly \section vhdlblocks Special documentation blocks in VHDL For VHDL a comment normally start with "--". Doxygen will extract comments starting with "--!". There are only two types of comment blocks in VHDL; a one line --! comment representing a brief description, and a multiline --! comment (where the --! prefix is repeated for each line) representing a detailed description. Comments are always located in front of the item that is being documented with one exception: for ports the comment can also be after the item and is then treated as a brief description for the port. Here is an example VHDL file with doxygen comments: \include mux.vhdl \htmlonly Click here for the corresponding HTML documentation that is generated by doxygen. \endhtmlonly To get proper looking output you need to set \ref cfg_optimize_output_vhdl "OPTIMIZE_OUTPUT_VHDL" to \c YES in the config file. This will also affect a number of other settings. When they were not already set correctly doxygen will produce a warning telling which settings where overruled. */