A documentation generator is a

programming tool A programming tool or software development tool is a computer program that software developers use to create, debug, maintain, or otherwise support other programs and applications. The term usually refers to relatively simple programs, that can b ...

that generates

software documentation Software documentation is written text or illustration that accompanies computer software or is embedded in the source code. The documentation either explains how the software operates or how to use it, and may mean different things to people in ...

intended for programmers (

API documentation An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how t ...

) or end users (

end-user In product development, an end user (sometimes end-user) is a person who ultimately uses or is intended to ultimately use a product. The end user stands in contrast to users who support or maintain the product, such as sysops, system administrato ...

guide), or both, from a set of

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the w ...

files, and in some cases,

binary file A binary file is a computer file that is not a text file. The term "binary file" is often used as a term meaning "non-text file". Many binary file formats contain parts that can be interpreted as text; for example, some computer document fil ...

s. Some generators, such as

Javadoc Javadoc (originally cased JavaDoc) is a documentation generator created by Sun Microsystems for the Java language (now owned by Oracle Corporation) for generating API documentation in HTML format from Java source code. The HTML format is used for ...

, can use special comments to drive the generation.

Doxygen Doxygen ( ) is a documentation generator and static analysis tool for software source trees. When used as a documentation generator, Doxygen extracts information from specially-formatted comments within the code. When used for analysis, Doxyge ...

is an example of a generator that can use all of these methods.

Types of generation

Document generation can be divided in several types: * Batch generation (generic technique) * Text block correspondence (documents created based on pre-defined text blocks) * Forms (forms for websites) * Documentation synthesis: ** Documentation can be inferred from code ** Documentation can be inferred from execution traces ** Documentation can be inferred from mailing lists Some

integrated development environment An integrated development environment (IDE) is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source code editor, build automation tools ...

s provide interactive access to documentation, code metadata, etc.

Types of generation

References

See also