Re: Feature request: generate documentation from C files

[Simon Josefsson]

Akim Demaille <address@hidden> writes:

>  > Hi Simon,
>  >     Would a tool to extract GTK-DOC comments and create Texinfo source be
>  >     suitable for inclusion in texinfo?  What do you think of the approach?
>  >     Is it a bad idea altogether?
>
>  > I think it is a very nice idea, and I'd be happy to include such a
>  > script in Texinfo.  Although it seems like a toss-up as to whether it is
>  > better to include it in Texinfo or in GTK.
>
> Errr, it seems to me that you ought to peek at Doxygen: it just needs
> another backend for Texinfo.  www.doxygen.org.

I'm using doxygen, but I think I wasn't clear on the feature I think
is the most important in the tool I want: generating a texinfo block
for _one function only_.  Doxygen (and GTK-DOC-tools for that matter)
appear to output entire sets of HTML files documenting the entire
package, and this is not useful if you want to write a texinfo manual
that look like:

@section foo

bar foo

foo bar

@include api-gsasl-client-start

then foo bar ...

@include api-gsasl-client-step

finally bar foo ...

@include api-gsasl-client-finish

OTOH, doxygen has solved the problem of defining some markup within
the comment, so adding a feature to doxygen to output a texinfo block
for one function only is probably easier than improving the perl hack
I use now.

Thanks for the input.