1 /******************************************************************************
5 * Copyright (C) 1997-2015 by Dimitri van Heesch.
7 * Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its
8 * documentation under the terms of the GNU General Public License is hereby
9 * granted. No representations are made about the suitability of this software
10 * for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.
11 * See the GNU General Public License for more details.
13 * Documents produced by Doxygen are derivative works derived from the
14 * input used in their production; they are not affected by this license.
23 <img src="doxygen_logo.gif" width="634" height="197" alt="doxygen"/><br/>
30 Doxygen is the de facto standard tool for generating documentation from
31 annotated C++ sources, but it also supports other popular programming
32 languages such as C, Objective-C, C#, PHP, Java, Python, IDL
33 (Corba, Microsoft, and UNO/OpenOffice flavors), Fortran, VHDL, Tcl, and to some extent D.
35 Doxygen can help you in three ways:
37 <li> It can generate an on-line documentation browser (in HTML) and/or an
38 off-line reference manual (in \LaTeX) from a set
39 of documented source files.
40 There is also support for generating output in RTF (MS-Word),
41 PostScript, hyperlinked PDF, compressed HTML, and Unix man pages.
42 The documentation is extracted directly from the sources, which
43 makes it much easier to keep the documentation consistent with the
45 <li> You can \ref extract_all "configure" doxygen to extract the code structure
46 from undocumented source files. This is very useful to quickly
47 find your way in large source distributions.
48 Doxygen can also visualize the relations between the various elements
49 by means of include dependency graphs, inheritance diagrams,
50 and collaboration diagrams, which are all generated automatically.
51 <li> You can also use doxygen for creating normal documentation (as I did
52 for the doxygen user manual and web-site).
55 Doxygen is developed under Mac OS X and Linux, but is set-up to be highly
56 portable. As a result, it runs on most other Unix flavors as well.
57 Furthermore, executables for Windows are available.
60 This manual is divided into three parts, each of which is divided into several sections.
62 The first part forms a user manual:
64 <li>Section \ref install discusses how to
65 <a href="http://www.doxygen.org/download.html">download</a>, compile and install
66 doxygen for your platform.
67 <li>Section \ref starting tells you how to generate your first piece of
68 documentation quickly.
69 <li>Section \ref docblocks demonstrates the various ways that code can
71 <li>Section \ref markdown show the Markdown formatting supported by doxygen.
72 <li>Section \ref lists shows how to create lists.
73 <li>Section \ref grouping shows how to group things together.
74 <li>Section \ref formulas shows how to insert formulas in the documentation.
75 <li>Section \ref diagrams describes the diagrams and graphs that doxygen can generate.
76 <li>Section \ref preprocessing explains how doxygen deals with macro definitions.
77 <li>Section \ref autolink shows how to put links to files, classes,
78 and members in the documentation.
79 <li>Section \ref output shows how to generate the various output formats
81 <li>Section \ref searching shows various ways to search in the HTML documentation.
82 <li>Section \ref extsearch shows how use the external search and index tools
83 <li>Section \ref customize explains how you can customize the output generated
85 <li>Section \ref custcmd show how to define and use custom commands in your comments.
86 <li>Section \ref external explains how to let doxygen create links to externally generated documentation.
87 <li>Section \ref faq gives answers to frequently asked questions.
88 <li>Section \ref trouble tells you what to do when you have problems.
91 The second part forms a reference manual:
94 <li>Section \ref features presents an overview of what doxygen can do.
95 <li>Section \ref doxygen_usage shows how to use the \c doxygen program.
96 <li>Section \ref doxywizard_usage shows how to use the \c doxywizard program.
97 <li>Section \ref config shows how to fine-tune doxygen, so it
98 generates the documentation you want.
99 <li>Section \ref commands shows an overview of the special commands that can be
100 used within the documentation.
101 <li>Section \ref htmlcmds shows an overview of the HTML commands that
102 can be used within the documentation.
103 <li>Section \ref xmlcmds shows an overview of the C# style XML commands that
104 can be used within the documentation.
107 The third part provides information for developers:
110 <li>Section \ref arch gives a global overview of how doxygen is internally
112 <li>Section \ref perlmod shows how to use the PerlMod output.
113 <li>Section \ref langhowto explains how to add support for new
117 \n<h2>Doxygen license</h2>
121 Copyright © 1997-2016 by
122 <a href="mailto:dimitri@stack.nl">Dimitri van Heesch</a>.<p>
124 Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its
125 documentation under the terms of the GNU General Public License is hereby
126 granted. No representations are made about the suitability of this software
127 for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.
129 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html">
130 GNU General Public License</a>
133 Documents produced by doxygen are derivative works derived from the
134 input used in their production; they are not affected by this license.
136 <h2>User examples</h2>
138 Doxygen supports a number of \ref output "output formats" where HTML is the
139 most popular one. I've gathered
140 <a href="http://www.doxygen.org/results.html">some nice examples</a>
141 of real-life projects using doxygen.
143 These are part of a larger
144 <a href="http://www.doxygen.org/projects.html">list of projects</a>
146 If you know other projects, let <a href="mailto:dimitri@stack.nl?subject=New%20project%20using%20Doxygen">me</a>
147 know and I'll add them.
150 Although doxygen is successfully used by large number of companies and
151 open source projects already, there is always room for improvement.
153 You can submit enhancement requests in
154 <a href="https://bugzilla.gnome.org/buglist.cgi?product=doxygen&bug_status=UNCONFIRMED&bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&bug_severity=enhancement">the bug tracker</a>.
155 Make sure the severity of the bug report is set to "enhancement".
157 <h2>Acknowledgments</h2>
158 \addindex acknowledgments
162 Malte Zöckler and Roland Wunderling, authors of DOC++.
163 The first version of doxygen borrowed some code of an old version of DOC++.
164 Although I have rewritten practically all code since then, DOC++ has still
165 given me a good start in writing doxygen.
166 <li>All people at Qt Software, for creating a beautiful GUI Toolkit
167 (which is very useful as a Windows/Unix platform abstraction layer :-)
169 for rendering the logos.
170 <li>Harm van der Heijden for adding HTML help support.
171 <li>Wouter Slegers of
172 <a href="http://www.yourcreativesolutions.nl">Your Creative Solutions</a>
173 for registering the www.doxygen.org domain.
174 <li>Parker Waechter for adding the RTF output generator.
175 <li>Joerg Baumann, for adding conditional documentation blocks,
176 PDF links, and the configuration generator.
177 <li>Tim Mensch for adding the todo command.
178 <li>Christian Hammond for redesigning the web-site.
179 <li>Ken Wong for providing the HTML tree view code.
180 <li>Talin for adding support for C# style comments with XML markup.
181 <li>Petr Prikryl for coordinating the internationalization support.
182 All language maintainers for providing translations into many languages.
183 <li>The band <a href="http://www.porcupinetree.com/">Porcupine Tree</a> for
184 providing hours of great music to listen to while coding.
185 <li>many, many others for suggestions, patches and bug reports.
189 Go to the <a href="install.html">next</a> section.