Doxygen is a documentation generator for various programming languages, including C++. This guide will show you how to use Doxygen to generate documentation for a C++ project in a structured and readable format.
Ensure that Doxygen is installed on your system. You can download it from the official website.
Navigate to your project's root directory in your command line interface and run the following command to create a default configuration file:
doxygen -g
This command will generate a file named Doxyfile
in your project directory.
Open the Doxyfile
with a text editor and set the following options:
PROJECT_NAME = "My Project"
OUTPUT_DIRECTORY = ./docs
GENERATE_HTML = YES
GENERATE_LATEX = YES
INPUT = ./src
RECURSIVE = YES
FILE_PATTERNS = *.cc *.hh
EXTRACT_ALL = YES
Adjust the INPUT
path to where your source files are located.
Add annotations to your test.hh
header file:
/**
* @file test.hh
* @brief Header file for the Test class.
*/
/**
* @class Test
* @brief A test class.
*
* More detailed class description.
*/
class Test {
public:
Test(); /**< Constructor for Test class. */
int doSomething(int param); /**< Does something. */
};
And to your test.cc
source file:
#include "test.hh"
/**
* @brief Constructs a new Test object.
*/
Test::Test() {
// Constructor implementation
}
/**
* @brief A method that does something.
* @param param Description of the parameter.
* @return Description of the return value.
*/
int Test::doSomething(int param) {
// Method implementation
return 0;
}
In the command line interface, navigate to your project directory where the Doxyfile
is located and run:
doxygen Doxyfile
Doxygen will process the annotated source files and generate documentation in the docs
directory.
After Doxygen has finished, open the index.html
file in the docs/html
directory with a web browser to view the documentation.
If you have LaTeX installed, navigate to the docs/latex
directory and run:
make
This will compile the LaTeX files into a PDF.
You have successfully generated documentation for your C++ project using Doxygen. The documentation is available in HTML and optionally in PDF format.
Please note that the actual commands and file paths might need to be adjusted according to your specific environment and project setup. This guide provides a general structure to help you document your C++ project with Doxygen.