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.
17 /*! \page trouble Troubleshooting
19 \section knowproblems Known Problems
21 <li>Doxygen is <em>not</em> a real compiler, it is only a lexical scanner.
22 This means that it can and will not detect errors in your source code.
23 <li>Doxygen has a build in preprocessor, but this works slightly different than
24 the C preprocessor. Doxygen assumes a header file is properly guarded against
25 multiple inclusion, and that each include file is standalone (i.e. it could be placed
26 at the top of a source file without causing compiler errors). As long as this is
27 true (and this is a good design practice) you should not encounter problems.
28 <li>Since it is impossible to test all possible code fragments, it is
29 very well possible, that some valid piece of C/C++ code is not handled
30 properly. If you find such a piece, please send it to me, so I can
31 improve doxygen's parsing capabilities. Try to make the piece of code
32 you send as small as possible, to help me narrow down the search.
33 <li>Doxygen does not work properly if there are multiple classes, structs
34 or unions with the same name in your code. It should not crash however,
35 rather it should ignore all of the classes with the same name except one.
36 <li>Some commands do not work inside the arguments of other commands.
37 Inside a HTML link (i.e. \<a href="..."\>...\<a\>) for instance
38 other commands (including other HTML commands) do not work!
39 The sectioning commands are an important exception.
40 <li>Redundant braces can confuse doxygen in some cases.
45 is properly parsed as a function declaration, but
49 is also seen as a function declaration with name
50 <code>int</code>, because only the syntax is analyzed,
51 not the semantics. If the redundant braces can be detected, as in
55 then doxygen will remove the braces and correctly parse the result.
56 <li>Not all names in code fragments that are included in the documentation
57 are replaced by links (for instance when using \ref cfg_source_browser "SOURCE_BROWSER" = `YES`)
58 and links to overloaded members may point to the wrong member.
59 This also holds for the "Referenced by" list that is generated for
62 For a part this is because the code parser isn't smart enough at the
63 moment. I'll try to improve this in the future. But even with these
64 improvements not everything can be properly linked to the corresponding
65 documentation, because of possible ambiguities or lack of
66 information about the context in which the code fragment is found.
67 <li>It is not possible to insert a non-member function f in a class A
68 using the \ref cmdrelates "\\relates" or \ref cmdrelatesalso "\\relatesalso"
69 command, if class A already
70 has a member with name f and the same argument list.
71 <li>There is only very limited support for member specialization at the
72 moment. It only works if there is a specialized template class as
74 <li>Not all special commands are properly translated to RTF.
75 <li>Version 1.8.6 of dot (and maybe earlier versions too) do not
76 generate proper map files, causing the graphs that doxygen generates
77 not to be properly clickable.
78 <li>PHP only: Doxygen requires that all PHP statements (i.e. code) is
79 wrapped in a functions/methods, otherwise you may run into parse problems.
83 \section howtohelp How to Help
84 The development of doxygen highly depends on your input!
86 If you are trying doxygen let me know what you think of it (do you
87 miss certain features?). Even if you decide not to use it, please let me
90 \section bug_reports How to report a bug
92 Bugs are tracked in GitHub's <a href="https://github.com/doxygen/doxygen/issues">issue tracker</a>.
94 <a href="https://github.com/doxygen/doxygen/issues/new">new bug</a>,
95 first <a href="https://github.com/doxygen/doxygen/issues">search</a>
96 through the database if the same bug has already been submitted by others.
97 If you believe you have found a new bug,
98 please <a href="https://github.com/doxygen/doxygen/issues/new">report it</a>.
100 If you are unsure whether or not something is a bug, please ask help
101 on the <a href="http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=5971">users mailing list</a>
102 first (subscription is required).
104 If you send only a (vague) description of a bug, you are usually not very
105 helpful and it will cost me much more time to figure out what you mean.
106 In the worst-case your bug report may even be completely ignored by me, so
107 always try to include the following information in your bug report:
108 - The version of doxygen you are using (for instance 1.5.3, use
109 `doxygen --version` if you are not sure).
110 - The name and version number of your operating system (for instance
111 Ubuntu Linux 18.04 LTS)
112 - It is usually a good idea to send along the configuration file as well,
113 but please use doxygen with the <code>-s</code> flag while generating it
114 to keep it small (use <code>doxygen -s -u [configName]</code> to strip
115 the comments from an existing configuration file).
116 - The easiest (and often the only) way for me to fix bugs is if you can
117 attach a small example demonstrating the problem you have to the bug report, so I can
118 reproduce it on my machine. Please make sure the example is valid
119 source code (could potentially compile) and that the problem is really
120 captured by the example (I often get examples that do not trigger the
121 actual bug!). If you intend to send more than one file please zip or tar
122 the files together into a single file for easier processing.
123 Note that when reporting a new bug you'll get a chance to attach a file to it
124 only \e after submitting the initial bug description.
126 You can (and are encouraged to) add a patch for a bug. If you do so
127 please use PATCH as a keyword in the bug entry form.
129 If you have ideas how to fix existing bugs and limitations please discuss them on
130 the <a href="http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=5971">developers mailing list</a>
131 (subscription required). Patches can also be sent directly to doxygen@gmail.com if
132 you prefer not to send them via the bug tracker or mailing list.
134 For patches please use
135 "diff -uN" or include the files you modified. If you send more than
136 one file please tar or zip everything, so I only have to save and download
140 Go to the <a href="features.html">next</a> section or return to the
141 <a href="index.html">index</a>.