The autogsdoc tool
The autogsdoc tool is a command-line utility for parsing ObjectiveC
source code (header files and optionally source files) in order to
generate documentation covering the public interface of the various
classes, categories, and protocols in the source.
The simple way to use this is to run the command with one or more
header file names as arguments ... the tool will automatically
parse corresponding source files in the same directory (or the
directory specified using the DocumentationDirectory default),
and produce gsdoc files as output.
Even without any human assistance, this tool will produce skeleton
documents listing the methods in the classes found in the source
files, but more importantly it can take specially formatted comments
from the source files and insert those comments into the gsdoc output.
Any comment beginning with slash and two asterisks rather than
the common slash and single asterisk, is taken to be gsdoc markup, to
be use as the description of the class or method following it. This
comment text is reformatted and then inserted into the output.
There are some cases where special extra processing is performed,
predominantly in the first comment found in the source file,
from which various chunks of gsdoc markup may be extracted and
placed into appropriate locations in the output document -
- AutogsdocSource
In any line where
AutogsdocSource
: is found, the remainder
of the line is taken as a source file name to be used instead of
making the assumption that each .h file processed uses a .m file
of the same name. You may supply multiple AutogsdocSource
:
lines where a header file declares items which are defined in
multiple source files.
- <abstract>
An abstract of the content of the document ... placed in the head
of the gsdoc output.
- <author>
A description of the author of the code - may be repeated to handle
the case where a document has multiple authors. Placed in the
head of the gsdoc output.
As an aid to readability of the source, some special additional
processing is performed related to the document author -
Any line of the form 'Author
: name <email-address>',
or 'By
: name <email-address>',
or 'Author
: name' or 'By
: name'
will be recognised and converted to an author element,
possibly containing an email element.
- <back>
Placed in the gsdoc output just before the end of the body of the
document - intended to be used for appendices, index etc.
- <chapter>
Placed immediately before any generated class documentation ...
intended to be used to provide overall description of how the
code being documented works.
- <copy>
Copyright of the content of the document ... placed in the head
of the gsdoc output.
As an aid to readability of the source, some special additional
processing is performed -
Any line of the form 'Copyright (C) text' will be recognised and
converted to a copy element.
- <date>
Date of the revision of the document ... placed in the head
of the gsdoc output. If this is omitted the tool will try to
construct a value from the RCS Date tag (if available).
- <front>
Inserted into the document at the start of the body ... intended
to provide for introduction or contents pages etc.
- <title>
Title of the document ... placed in the head of the gsdoc output.
If this is omitted the tool will generate a (probably poor)
title of its own.
-
NBThis markup may be used within
class, category, or protocol documentation ... if so, it is
extracted and wrapped round the rest of the documentation for
the class as the classes chapter.
The rest of the class documentation is normally
inserted at the end of the chapter, but may instead be substituted
in in place of the <unit /> pseudo-element within the
<chapter> element.
- <version>
Version identifier of the document ... placed in the head
of the gsdoc output. If this is omitted the tool will try to
construct a value from the RCS Revision tag (if available).
In comments being used to provide text for a method description, the
following markup is removed from the text and handled specially -
- <init />
The method is marked as being the designated initialiser for the class.
- <override-subclass />
The method is marked as being one which subclasses must override
(eg an abstract method).
- <override-never />
The method is marked as being one which subclasses should NOT
override.
- <standards> ... </standards>
The markup is removed from the description and placed after
it in the gsdoc output - so that the method is described as
conforming (or not conforming) to the specified standards.
Generally, the text in comments is reformatted to standardise and
indent it nicely ... the reformatting is not performed on
any text inside an <example> element.
When the text is reformatted, it is broken into whitespace separated
'words' which are then subjected to some extra processing ...
- Certain well known constants such as YES, NO, and nil are
enclosed in <code> ... </code> markup.
- The names of method arguments within method descriptions are
enclosed in <var> ... </var> markup.
- Method names (beginning with a plus or minus) are enclosed
in <ref...> ... </ref> markup.
eg. "-init" (without the quotes) would be wrapped in a gsdoc
reference element to point to the init method of the current
class or, if only one known class had an init method, it
would refer to the method of that class.
Note the fact that the method name must be surrounded by
whitespace (though a comma, fullstop, or semicolon at the end
of the specifier will also act as a whitespace terminator).
- Method specifiers including class names (beginning and ending with
square brackets) are enclosed in <ref...> ... </ref> markup.
eg. [ NSObject-init],
will create a reference to the init method of NSObject, while
[ (NSCopying)-copyWithZone:], creates a
reference to a method in the NSCopyIng protocol.
Note that no spaces must appear between the square brackets
in these specifiers.
Protocol namnes are enclosed in round brackets rather than
the customary angle brackets, because gsdoc is an XML language, and
XML treats angle brackets specially.
The tools accepts certain user defaults (which can of course be
supplied as command-line arguments as usual) -
- Declared
Specify where headers are to be documented as being found.
The actual name produced in the documentation is formed by appending
the last component of the header file name to the value of this
default.
If this default is not specified, the full name of the header file
(as supplied on the command line), with the HeaderDirectory
default prepended, is used.
A typical usage of this might be -Declared Foundation
when generating documentation for the GNUstep base library. This
would result in the documentation saying that NSString is declared
in Foundation/NSString.h
- DocumentAllInstanceVariables
This flag permits you to generate documentation for all instance
variables. Normally, only those explicitly declared 'public' or
'protected' will be documented.
- DocumentationDirectory
May be used to specify the directory in which generated
documentation is to be placed. If this is not set, output
is placed in the current directory.
- GenerateHtml
May be used to specify if HTML output is to be generated.
Defaults to YES.
- HeaderDirectory
May be used to specify the directory to be searched for header files.
If this is not specified, headers are looked for relative to the
current directory or using absolute path names if given.
- IgnoreDependencies
A boolean value which may be used to specify that the program should
ignore file modification times and regenerate files anyway. Provided
for use in conjunction with the
make
system, which is
expected to manage dependency checking itsself.
- LocalProjects
This value is used to control the automatic inclusion of local
external projects into the indexing system for generation of
cross-references in final document output.
If set to 'None', then no local project references are done,
otherwise, the 'Local' GNUstep documentation directory is recursively
searched for files with a .igsdoc
extension, and the
indexing information from those files is used.
The value of this string is also used to generate the filenames in
the cross reference ... if it is an empty string, the path to use
is assumed to be a file in the same directory where the igsdoc
file was found, otherwise it is used as a prefix to the name in
the index.
NB. Local projects with the same name as the project currently
being documented will not be included by this mechanism.
If you wish to include such projects, you must do so explicitly
using -Projects
- Project
May be used to specify the name of this project ... determines the
name of the index reference file produced as part of the documentation
to provide information enabling other projects to cross-reference to
items in this project.
- Projects
This value may be supplied as a dictionary containing the paths to
the igsdoc index/reference files used by external projects, along
with values to be used to map the filenames found in the indexes.
For example, if a project index (igsdoc) file says that the class
Foo
is found in the file Foo
, and the
path associated with that project index is /usr/doc/proj
,
Then generated html output may reference the class as being in
/usr/doc/prj/Foo.html
- ShowDependencies
A boolean value which may be used to specify that the program should
log which files are being regenerated because of their dependencies
on other files.
- Standards
A boolean value used to specify whether the program should insert
information about standards complience into ythe documentation.
This should only be used when documenting the GNUstep libraries
and tools themselves as it assumes that the code being documented
is part of GNUstep and possibly complies with the OpenStep standard
or implements MacOS-X compatible methods.
- SystemProjects
This value is used to control the automatic inclusion of system
external projects into the indexing system for generation of
cross-references in final document output.
If set to 'None', then no system project references are done,
otherwise, the 'System' GNUstep documentation directory is recursively
searched for files with a .igsdoc
extension, and the
indexing information from those files is used.
The value of this string is also used to generate the filenames in
the cross reference ... if it is an empty string, the path to use
is assumed to be a file in the same directory where the igsdoc
file was found, otherwise it is used as a prefix to the name in
the index.
NB. System projects with the same name as the project currently
being documented will not be included by this mechanism.
If you wish to include such projects, you must do so explicitly
using -Projects
- Up
A string used to supply the name to be used in the 'up' link from
generated gsdoc documents. This should normally be the name of a
file which contains an index of the contents of a project.
If this is missing or set to an empty string, then no 'up' link
will be provided in the documents.
- WordMap
This value is a dictionary used to map identifiers/keywords found
in the source files to other words. Generally you will not have
to use this, but it is sometimes helpful to avoid the parser being
confused by the use of C preprocessor macros. You can effectively
redefine the macro to something less confusing.
The value you map the identifier to must be one of -
Another identifier,
An empty string - the value is ignored,
Two slashes ('//') - the rest of the line is ignored.
Inter-document linkage
The 'Up' default is used to specify the name of a document which
should be used as the 'up' link for any other documents used.
This name must not include a path or extension.
Generally, the document referred to by this default should be a
hand-edited gsdoc document which should have a back
section containing a project index. eg.
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE gsdoc PUBLIC "-//GNUstep//DTD gsdoc 0.6.7//EN"
"http://www.gnustep.org/gsdoc-0_6_7.xml">
<gsdoc base="index">
<head>
<title>My project reference</title>
<author name="my name"></author>
</head>
<body>
<chapter>
<heading>My project reference</heading>
</chapter>
<back>
<index scope="project" type="title" />
</back>
</body>
</gsdoc>