Doxygen
| Doxygen
|
|
|---|---|
|
|
 Documentation of a C ++ class created with Doxygen |
|
| Basic data
|
|
| developer | Dimitri van Heesch |
| Publishing year | October 26, 1997 |
| Current version |
1.8.18 ( April 13, 2020 ) |
| operating system | Linux , macOS , Solaris , Unix , Windows |
| programming language | C ++ |
| category | Software documentation tool |
| License | GPL |
| German speaking | Yes |
| www.doxygen.nl | |
Doxygen is a free software documentation tool under the GNU General Public License .
Background and motivation
With special comments in the source text , software developers can define explanations for program elements from which Doxygen creates clear documentation . It is also possible to generate a summarizing overview of the structure and elements of an existing program ( files used , functions , variables and their respective roles in the program flow).
The aim of such a documentation method is to avoid redundancy and to increase the clarity of the code. Since program structures have to be described in the source text itself, a parallel documentation of the structures (functions, classes, methods, etc.) in a separate developer documentation is prone to errors, since these change frequently in the course of development. In addition, the developer is spared the effort of creating separate documents and the completeness of the documentation is secured and increased.
Doxy documentation also makes it easier to understand and reengineer unknown code .
The so-called Doxywizard serves as the graphical user interface , with which the settings , which control type and form of documentation generation can be easily made.
Most major development environments ( IDE ) support Doxygen through syntax highlighting .
The first Doxygen version used source code from DOC ++, which was developed at the Zuse Institute Berlin by Roland Wunderling and Malte Zöckler.
Doxygen is compatible with code versioning with Subversion ; H. automatically generated codes for authors, editors, date and time of check-in could be transferred to the Doxy documentation.
Supported programming languages
Supported programming languages are C ++ , C , Objective-C , Java , Python , Fortran and IDL . They are supported in their full range of languages. Commenting on PHP , C # , D and VHDL is also possible with restrictions . From version 1.7.5 Tcl is supported. Additional filters can also be used to edit source code in Perl or Object Pascal .
Supported output formats
Doxygen supports HTML , CHM , LaTeX , XML , RTF , PostScript , PDF , man pages and Markdown as output formats . Corresponding control data can also be created for the creation of help files for the Qt help system . As of version 1.8.8 and is PlantUml support to UML diagrams to create.
example
The documentation of a function can be embedded in the source text as follows (here in the programming language C):
/**
* \brief Exemplarische Funktion
*
* Diese Funktion gibt den übergebenen Parameter
* auf der Konsole aus.
*
* \param parameter Auszugebender Parameter
* \return Status-Code
*
*/
int funktion(int parameter)
{
printf("Parameter: %d", parameter);
return 0;
}
Similar tools
- Javadoc , Natural Docs , phpDocumentor , ASDoc , ROBODoc , Sandcastle , AutoDuck , pydoc , HeaderDoc , Plain Old Documentation , Sphinx , CWEB .
Web links
- Official website (English)
- Pas2Dox: A Pascal filter for Doxygen (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ web.archive.org .
- ↑ Release 1.8.18 . April 13, 2020 (accessed April 13, 2020).
- ^ Doxygen Manual: Markdown support. Retrieved August 20, 2020 .
- ^ Doxygen Manual: Changelog. Retrieved August 20, 2020 .