Using a rakefile to generate docs from source

Question

I downloaded the ruby Twitter gem source code and am trying to generate the documentation using yard, which I installed via gem install yard. In the rakefile, I found the following, which I assume is used to generate the docs for the Twitter gem:

require 'yard'
YARD::Rake::YardocTask.new

I tried to require yard in irb and then run YARD::Rake::YardocTask.new but nothing happened.

Can you help me get on the right track?

@AdamEberlin but can you confirm how I'm supposed to do it> Do I go into irb and run that command and it'll generate Twitter api docs? — BrainLikeADullPencil, Oct 23 '12 at 03:00
Am I the only one who before getting to the post typed "yard rake" into google and was confused by the results? — Nathan Lilienthal, Mar 28 '13 at 23:51

score 15 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 23 '12 at 03:12

15

From the YARD docs:

The second most obvious is to generate docs via a Rake task. You can do this by adding the following to your Rakefile:
YARD::Rake::YardocTask.new do |t|
  t.files   = ['lib/**/*.rb', OTHER_PATHS]   # optional
  t.options = ['--any', '--extra', '--opts'] # optional
end
both the files and options settings are optional. files will default to lib/**/*.rb and options will represents any options you might want to add. Again, a full list of options is available by typing yardoc --help in a shell. You can also override the options at the Rake command-line with the OPTS environment variable:
$ rake yard OPTS='--any --extra --opts'

To summarize: after adding YARD::Rake::YardocTask.new to your Rakefile, run rake yard.

answered Oct 23 '12 at 03:12

Andrew Marshall

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Note that the block is actually optional. According to [the doc](http://www.rubydoc.info/gems/yard/0.9.5/YARD/Rake/YardocTask#initialize-instance_method), you can change the name of the task if you like. – Franklin Yu Sep 03 '16 at 19:10
But what is really OTHER_PATHS? I'm not able to include any extra files. – Juan Ibiapina Sep 24 '16 at 14:29
@NathanLilienthal - I can only assume/hope that YARD was named for the sake of this pun. I smell a backronymic apronym... – Benjineer Dec 05 '17 at 09:32

Using a rakefile to generate docs from source

1 Answers1