1AUTOGSDOC(1) GNUstep System Manual AUTOGSDOC(1)
2
6 autogsdoc - GNUstep API documentation generator and XML->HTML converter
7
10 autogsdoc [-Files filename] [-GenerateHtml YES|no] [-Clean yes|NO]
11 [-CleanTemplates yes|NO] [-IgnoreDependencies yes|NO] [-MakeDependen‐
12 cies yes|NO] [-ShowDependencies yes|NO] [-HeaderDirectory path] [-Docu‐
13 mentationDirectory path] [-Declared location] [-Project title] [-Stan‐
14 dards yes|NO] [-DocumentAllInstanceVariables yes|NO] [-DocumentIn‐
15 stanceVariables YES|no] [-InstanceVariablesAtEnd yes|NO] [-Con‐
16 stantsTemplate filename] [-FunctionsTemplate filename] [-MacrosTemplate
17 filename] [-TypedefsTemplate filename] [-VariablesTemplate filename]
18 [-SystemProjects string] [-LocalProjects string] [-Projects dictString]
19 [-Verbose yes|NO] [-Warn yes|NO] [-WordMap dictString] [files]
20
23 The autogsdoc tool is a command-line utility that helps developers pro‐
24 duce reference documentation for GNUstep APIs. It also enables devel‐
25 opers to write and maintain other documentation in XML and have it con‐
26 verted to HTML. In detail, autogsdoc will:
27 - Extract special comments describing the public interfaces of classes,
29 categories, protocols, functions, and macros from Objective C source
30 code (header files and optionally source files) into GSDoc XML files.
31 - Convert GSDoc XML files, whether generated from source code or writ‐
33 ten manually by developers, into HTML.
34 - Construct indices based on GSDoc XML file sets, and convert those to
36 HTML as well.
37 The most common usage this is to run the command with one or more
40 header file names as arguments ... the tool will automatically parse
41 corresponding source files in the same directory as the headers (or the
42 current directory, or the directory specified using the Documenta‐
43 tionDirectory default), and produce GSDoc and HTML files as output.
44 For best results this mode should be run from the directory containing
45 the source files. (Note that since C is a subset of Objective C, this
46 tool can operate to document functions and other C structures in plain
47 C source.)
48 GSDoc files may also be given directly in addition or by themselves,
50 and will be converted to HTML. See the GSDoc HTML documentation or the
51 gsdoc(7) man page for information on the GSDoc format.
52 Finally, HTML files may be given on the command line. Cross-references
54 to other parts of code documentation found within them will be rewrit‐
55 ten based on what is found in the project currently.
56
59 The source code parser will automatically produce GSDoc documents list‐
60 ing the methods in the classes found in the source files, and it will
61 include text from specially formatted comments from the source files.
62 Any comment beginning with slash and two asterisks rather than the com‐
64 mon slash and single asterisk, is taken to be GSDoc markup, to be use
65 as the description of the class or method following it. This comment
66 text is reformatted and then inserted into the output.
67 Where multiple comments are associated with the same item, they are
68 joined together with a line break (<br/>) between each if necessary.
69 The tool can easily be used to document programs as well as libraries,
71 simply by giving it the name of the source file containing the main()
72 function of the program - it takes the special comments from that func‐
73 tion and handles them specially, inserting them as a section at the end
74 of the first chapter of the document (it creates the first chapter if
75 necessary).
76 Options are described in the section Arguments and Defaults below.
78
81 There are some cases where special extra processing is performed, pre‐
82 dominantly in the first comment found in the source file, from which
83 various chunks of GSDoc markup may be extracted and placed into appro‐
84 priate locations in the output document -
85 AutogsdocSource:
87 In any line where AutogsdocSource: is found, the remainder of the
88 line is taken as a source file name to be used instead of making
89 the assumption that each .h file processed uses a .m file of the
90 same name. You may supply multiple AutogsdocSource: lines where a
91 header file declares items which are defined in multiple source
92 files. If a file name is absolute, it is used just as supplied. If
93 on the other hand, it is a relative path, the software looks for
94 the source file first relative to the location of the header file,
95 and if not found there, relative to the current directory in which
96 autogsdoc is running, and finally relative to the directory speci‐
97 fied by the DocumentationDirectory default.
98 <abstract>
100 An abstract of the content of the document ... placed in the head
101 of the GSDoc output.
102 <author>
104 A description of the author of the code - may be repeated to handle
105 the case where a document has multiple authors. Placed in the head
106 of the GSDoc output. As an aid to readability of the source, some
107 special additional processing is performed related to the document
108 author - Any line of the form 'Author: name <email-address>', or
109 'By: name <email-address>', or 'Author: name' or 'By: name' will be
110 recognised and converted to an author element, possibly containing
111 an email element.
112 <back>
114 Placed in the GSDoc output just before the end of the body of the
115 document - intended to be used for appendices, index etc..
116 <chapter>
118 Placed immediately before any generated class documentation ...
119 intended to be used to provide overall description of how the code
120 being documented works. Any documentation for the main() function
121 of a program is inserted as a section at the end of this chapter.
122 <copy>
124 Copyright of the content of the document ... placed in the head of
125 the GSDoc output. As an aid to readability of the source, some
126 special additional processing is performed - Any line of the form
127 'Copyright (C) text' will be recognised and converted to a copy
128 element.
129 <date>
131 Date of the revision of the document ... placed in the head of the
132 GSDoc output. If this is omitted the tool will try to construct a
133 value from the RCS Date tag (if available).
134 <front>
136 Inserted into the document at the start of the body ... intended to
137 provide for introduction or contents pages etc.
138 <title>
140 Title of the document ... placed in the head of the GSDoc output.
141 If this is omitted the tool will generate a (probably poor) title
142 of its own - so you should include this markup manually.
143 <version>
145 Version identifier of the document ... placed in the head of the
146 GSDoc output. If this is omitted the tool will try to construct a
147 value from the RCS Revision tag (if available).
148 NB The markup just described may be used within class, category, or
150 protocol documentation ... if so, it is extracted and wrapped round the
151 rest of the documentation for the class as the class's chapter. The
152 rest of the class documentation is normally inserted at the end of the
153 chapter, but may instead be substituted in in place of the <unit>
154 pseudo-element within the <chapter> element.
155
158 In comments being used to provide text for a method description, the
159 following markup is removed from the text and handled specially -
160 <init>
162 The method is marked as being the designated initialiser for the
163 class.
164 <override-subclass>
166 The method is marked as being one which subclasses must override
167 (e.g. an abstract method).
168 <override-never>
170 The method is marked as being one which subclasses should NOT over‐
171 ride.
172 <standards>
174 The markup is removed from the description and placed after it in
175 the GSDoc output - so that the method is described as conforming
176 (or not conforming) to the specified standards.
177
180 Generally, the text in comments is reformatted to standardise and
181 indent it nicely ... the reformatting is not performed on any text
182 inside an <example> element. When the text is reformatted, it is bro‐
183 ken into whitespace separated
184 Certain well known constants such as YES, NO, and nil are enclosed
186 in <code>
187 The names of method arguments within method descriptions are
189 enclosed in <var> ... </var> markup.
190 Method names (beginning with a plus or minus) are enclosed in
192 <ref...> wrapped in a GSDoc reference element to point to the init
193 method of the current class or, if only one known class had an init
194 method, it would refer to the method of that class. Note the fact
195 that the method name must be surrounded by whitespace to be recog‐
196 nized (though a comma, fullstop, or semicolon at the end of the
197 specifier will act like whitespace).
198 Method specifiers including class names (beginning and ending with
200 square brackets) are enclosed in <ref...> ... </ref> markup. e.g.
201 '[NSObject-init]', will create a reference to the init method of
202 NSObject (either the class proper, or any of its categories), while
203 NSCopying protocol. Note that no spaces must appear between the
204 square brackets in these specifiers. Protocol names are enclosed
205 in round brackets rather than the customary angle brackets, because
206 GSDoc is an XML language, and XML treats angle brackets specially.
207 Function names (ending with '()') other than 'main()' are enclosed
209 in <ref...> ... </ref> markup. E.g. "NSLogv()" (without the
210 quotes) would be wrapped in a GSDoc reference element to point to
211 the documentation of the NSLog function. Note the fact that the
212 function name must be surrounded by whitespace (though a comma,
213 fullstop, or semicolon at the end of the specifier will also act as
214 a whitespace terminator).
215
218 The tool accepts certain user defaults (which can of course be supplied
219 as command-line arguments by prepending '-' before the default name and
220 giving the value afterwards, as in -Clean YES):
221 Clean
223 If this boolean value is set to YES, then rather than generating
224 documentation, the tool removes all GSDoc files generated in the
225 project, and all html files generated from them (as well as any
226 which would be generated from GSDoc files listed explicitly), and
227 finally removes the project index file. The only exception to this
228 is that template GSDoc files (i.e. those specified using "-Con‐
229 stantsTemplate ...", "-FunctionsTemplate ..." arguments etc) are
230 not deleted unless the CleanTemplates flag is set.
231 CleanTemplates
233 This flag specifies whether template GSDoc files are to be removed
234 along with other files when the Clean option is specified. The
235 default is for them not to be removed ... since these templates may
236 have been produced manually and just had data inserted into them.
237 ConstantsTemplate
239 Specify the name of a template document into which documentation
240 about constants should be inserted from all files in the project.
241 This is useful if constants in the source code are scattered around
242 many files, and you need to group them into one place. You are
243 responsible for ensuring that the basic template document (into
244 which individual constant documentation is inserted) contains all
245 the other information you want, but as a convenience autogsdoc will
246 generate a simple template (which you may then edit) for you if the
247 file does not exist. Insertion takes place immediately before the
248 back element (or if that does not exist, immediately before the end
249 of the body element) in the template.
250 Declared
252 Specify where headers are to be documented as being found. The
253 actual name produced in the documentation is formed by appending
254 the last component of the header file name to the value of this
255 default. If this default is not specified, the full name of the
256 header file (as supplied on the command line), with the HeaderDi‐
257 rectory default prepended, is used. A typical usage of this might
258 be '"-Declared Foundation"' when generating documentation for the
259 GNUstep base library. This would result in the documentation say‐
260 ing that NSString is declared in 'Foundation/NSString.h'
261 DocumentAllInstanceVariables
263 This flag permits you to generate documentation for all instance
264 variables. Normally, only those explicitly declared 'public' or
265 DocumentInstanceVariables
267 This flag permits you to turn off documentation for instance vari‐
268 ables completely. Normally, explicitly declared 'public' or 'pro‐
269 tected' instance variables will be documented.
270 InstanceVariablesAtEnd
272 This flag, if set, directs the HTML generator to place instance
273 variable documentation at the end of the class, instead of the
274 beginning. This is useful if you use a lot of protected instance
275 variables which are only going to be of secondary interest to gen‐
276 eral users of the class.
277 DocumentationDirectory
279 May be used to specify the directory in which generated documenta‐
280 tion is to be placed. If this is not set, output is placed in the
281 current directory. This directory is also used as a last resort to
282 locate source files (not headers), and more importantly, it is used
283 as the first and only resort to locate any .gsdoc files that are
284 passed in on the command line. Any path information given for
285 these files is removed and they are searched for in 'Documenta‐
286 tionDirectory' (even though they may not have been autogenerated).
287 Files
289 Specifies the name of a file containing a list of file names as a
290 property list array (name1,name2,...) format. If this is present,
291 filenames in the program argument list are ignored and the names in
292 this file are used as the list of names to process.
293 FunctionsTemplate
295 Specify the name of a template document into which documentation
296 about functions should be inserted from all files in the project.
297 This is useful if function source code is scattered around many
298 files, and you need to group it into one place. You are responsi‐
299 ble for ensuring that the basic template document (into which indi‐
300 vidual function documentation is inserted) contains all the other
301 information you want, but as a convenience autogsdoc will generate
302 a simple template (which you may then edit) for you if the file
303 does not exist. Insertion takes place immediately before the back
304 element (or if that does not exist, immediately before the end of
305 the body element) in the template.
306 GenerateHtml
308 May be used to specify if HTML output is to be generated. Defaults
309 to YES.
310 HeaderDirectory
312 May be used to specify the directory to be searched for header
313 files. When supplied, this value is prepended to relative header
314 names, otherwise the relative header names are interpreted relative
315 to the current directory. Header files specified as absolute paths
316 are not influenced by this default.
317 IgnoreDependencies
319 A boolean value which may be used to specify that the program
320 should ignore file modification times and regenerate files anyway.
321 Provided for use in conjunction with the 'make' system, which is
322 expected to manage dependency checking itsself.
323 LocalProjects
325 This value is used to control the automatic inclusion of local
326 external projects into the indexing system for generation of cross-
327 references in final document output. If set to 'None', then no
328 local project references are done, otherwise, the 'Local' GNUstep
329 documentation directory is recursively searched for files with a
330 '.igsdoc' extension, and the indexing information from those files
331 is used. The value of this string is also used to generate the
332 filenames in the cross reference ... if it is an empty string, the
333 path to use is assumed to be a file in the same directory where the
334 igsdoc file was found, otherwise it is used as a prefix to the name
335 in the index. NB. Local projects with the same name as the project
336 currently being documented will not be included by this mechanism.
337 If you wish to include such projects, you must do so explicitly
338 using -Projects ...
339 MacrosTemplate
341 Specify the name of a template document into which documentation
342 about macros should be inserted from all files in the project.
343 This is useful if macro code is scattered around many files, and
344 you need to group it into one place. You are responsible for
345 ensuring that the basic template document (into which individual
346 macro documentation is inserted) contains all the other information
347 you want, but as a convenience autogsdoc will generate a simple
348 template (which you may then edit) for you if the file does not
349 exist. Insertion takes place immediately before the back element
350 (or if that does not exist, immediately before the end of the body
351 element) in the template.
352 MakeDependencies
354 A filename to be used to output dependency information for make.
355 This will take the form of listing all header and source files
356 known for the project as dependencies of the project name (see
357 Project
359 May be used to specify the name of this project ... determines the
360 name of the index reference file produced as part of the documenta‐
361 tion to provide information enabling other projects to cross-refer‐
362 ence to items in this project.
363 Projects
365 This value may be supplied as a dictionary containing the paths to
366 the igsdoc index/reference files used by external projects, along
367 with values to be used to map the filenames found in the indexes.
368 For example, if a project index (igsdoc) file says that the class
369 path associated with that project index is '/usr/doc/proj', Then
370 generated html output may reference the class as being in given on
371 the command line by using the standard PropertyList format (not the
372 XML format of OS X), using semicolons as line-separators, and
373 enclosing it in single quotes.
374 ShowDependencies
376 A boolean value which may be used to specify that the program
377 should log which files are being regenerated because of their
378 dependencies on other files.
379 Standards
381 A boolean value used to specify whether the program should insert
382 information about standards complience into the documentation.
383 This should only be used when documenting the GNUstep libraries and
384 tools themselves as it assumes that the code being documented is
385 part of GNUstep and possibly complies with the OpenStep standard or
386 implements MacOS-X compatible methods.
387 SystemProjects
389 This value is used to control the automatic inclusion of system
390 external projects into the indexing system for generation of cross-
391 references in final document output. If set to 'None', then no
392 system project references are done, otherwise, the 'System' GNUstep
393 documentation directory is recursively searched for files with a
394 '.igsdoc' extension, and the indexing information from those files
395 is used. The value of this string is also used to generate the
396 filenames in the cross reference ... if it is an empty string, the
397 path to use is assumed to be a file in the same directory where the
398 igsdoc file was found, otherwise it is used as a prefix to the name
399 in the index. NB. System projects with the same name as the
400 project currently being documented will not be included by this
401 mechanism. If you wish to include such projects, you must do so
402 explicitly using -Projects ...
403 TypedefsTemplate
405 Specify the name of a template document into which documentation
406 about typedefs should be inserted from all files in the project.
407 This is useful if typedef source code is scattered around many
408 files, and you need to group it into one place. You are responsi‐
409 ble for ensuring that the basic template document (into which indi‐
410 vidual typedef documentation is inserted) contains all the other
411 information you want, but as a convenience autogsdoc will generate
412 a simple template (which you may then edit) for you if the file
413 does not exist. Insertion takes place immediately before the back
414 element (or if that does not exist, immediately before the end of
415 the body element) in the template.
416 Up A string used to supply the name to be used in the 'up' link from
418 generated GSDoc documents. This should normally be the name of a
419 file which contains an index of the contents of a project. If this
420 is missing or set to an empty string, then no 'up' link will be
421 provided in the documents.
422 VariablesTemplate
424 Specify the name of a template document into which documentation
425 about variables should be inserted from all files in the project.
426 This is useful if variable source code is scattered around many
427 files, and you need to group it into one place. You are responsi‐
428 ble for ensuring that the basic template document (into which indi‐
429 vidual variable documentation is inserted) contains all the other
430 information you want, but as a convenience autogsdoc will generate
431 a simple template (which you may then edit) for you if the file
432 does not exist. Insertion takes place immediately before the back
433 element (or if that does not exist, immediately before the end of
434 the body element) in the template.
435 Verbose
437 A boolean used to specify whether you want verbose debug/warning
438 output to be produced.
439 Warn
441 A boolean used to specify whether you want standard warning output
442 (e.g. report of undocumented methods) produced.
443 WordMap
445 This value is a dictionary used to map identifiers/keywords found
446 in the source files to other words. Generally you will not have
447 to use this, but it is sometimes helpful to avoid the parser being
448 confused by the use of C preprocessor macros. You can effectively
449 redefine the macro to something less confusing. The value you map
450 the identifier to must be one of - Another identifier, An empty
451 string - the value is ignored, Two slashes ('//') - the rest of the
452 line is ignored. Note that a dictionary may be given on the com‐
453 mand line by using the standard PropertyList format (not the XML
454 format of OS X), using semicolons as line-separators, and enclosing
455 it in single quotes.
456
459 The 'Up' default is used to specify the name of a document which should
460 be used as the 'up' link for any other documents used. This name must
461 not include a path or extension. Generally, the document referred to by
462 this default should be a hand-edited GSDoc document which should have a
463 <em>back</em> section containing a project index. e.g.
464 <?xml version="1.0"?>
466 <!DOCTYPE gsdoc PUBLIC "-//GNUstep//DTD gsdoc 1.0.3//EN"
467 "http://www.gnustep.org/gsdoc-1_0_3.xml">
468 <gsdoc base="index">
469 <head>
470 <title>My project reference</title>
471 <author name="my name"></author>
472 </head>
473 <body>
474 <chapter>
475 <heading>My project reference</heading>
476 </chapter>
477 <back>
478 <index scope="project" type="title" />
479 </back>
480 </body>
481 </gsdoc>
482
485 Source: .h, .m, .c
486 GSDoc: .gsdoc
487 Index: .igsdoc
488 HTML: .html
489
492 Several GSDoc elements are not rendered properly into HTML yet. These
493 are: <prjref>, <EOEntity>, <EOModel>.
494
497 Error messages and warnings can come from each of the stages of the
498 pipeline: top-level control, source parsing, GSDoc parsing, and index‐
499 ing.
500
503 gsdoc(7), GNUstep(7)
504
506 Autogsdoc combined the capabilities of two earlier tools, 'autodoc' and
507 'gsdoc', which performed the source->GSDoc and GSDoc->HTML translations
508 respectively. These earlier tools and the GSDoc format were developed
509 for GNUstep based on the earlier GDML SGML language.
510 This manual page first appeared in gnustep-base 1.9.2 (March 2004).
512
514 autogsdoc was written by Richard Frith-McDonald <rfm@gnu.org>
515 This manual page added by Adrian Robert <arobert@cogsci.ucsd.edu>.
517GNUstep March 2004 AUTOGSDOC(1)