Automatic Documentation Systems to make it clearer

Why Automatic Documentation derives documentation directly from the code simplifies maintenance of code documentation produces high quality up-to-date documentation that makes understanding the code easier doxygen is one of often-used documentation generation systems

Setting Up and Runnign Doxygen doxygen is a free automatic documentation generation system generates code for all files in a specific directories (including subdirectories) before running needs a configuration file can generate template as follows doxygen –g default configuration file is stored in Doxyfile most default settings are satisfactory disable LaTeX documentation generation if configuration file is set up, to run doxygen type doxygen [directory name] by default – current directory is used creates subdirectory html with HTML-formatted documentation when running: watch output for warnings and uncommented constructs

Doxygen Comment Format Doxygen examines C++ comments and uses them to document the code to be considered by Doxygen the comments have to be formatted in a certain way two types of descriptions brief – a one line short description of the construct, multiple variants of formatting, three slashes work /// example brief description long – detailed description, tends to be multiple-lines long use c-style comments, note the extra star /** this is an example * of a long description * / there can be at most one long and one short description description either immediately precedes or follows the construct

Documented Constructs by default Doxygen examines header files and documents classes and functions it finds there to document constructs in other files (.cpp) put a Doxygen comment in the beginning with a word \file in it note that \file should be the last on the comment line