0

I'm looking for a tool that generates documentation from source tags in VB.NET 4.0 code.

Some of the problems I have encountered so far:

  • doxygen does not support VB.NET
  • NDOC and others are deprecated, or do not handle generics, etc.
  • Sandcastle is complicated
  • doc-o-matic and ForgeDoc are commercial and seem to focus on Visual Studio integration, which I don't use (intentionally)

The features I would appreciate:

  • command line tool for a linked HTML generation
  • graphical class structure

I hope someone can kindly point me to this little tool I overlooked... :)

gpinkas
  • 2,291
  • 2
  • 33
  • 49

1 Answers1

1

Look at this link:

https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/36071/what-javadoc-equivalents-do-you-use-in-net

Sandcastle supported by Sandcastle Help File Builder - both found on Microsoft's CodePlex site.

A while back I was tasked with replacing our company's previous build-time documentation generation using NDoc (now deceased). Sandcastle was the proposed new method. After researching it, I found that Sandcastle is a mess of utilities produced by Microsoft to generate documentation. Trying to implement those utilities on their own is a nightmare.

Sandcastle Help File Builder is an incredibly useful layer that uses the Sandcastle utilities but makes the creation of a documentation project a million times easier. The developer behind it has been very responsive in the CodePlex forums when I've requested help.

It provides a GUI for configuring your project and produces a project file that is compatible with MSBuild. I set ours up to generate the SHFB project on the fly, run it with MSBuild, and output to our internal API web server. Works great.

Community
  • 1
  • 1
paulsm4
  • 114,292
  • 17
  • 138
  • 190
  • But Sandcastle obviously needs XML input files which are generated from source comments by ... Visual Studio. [see here](http://www.simple-talk.com/dotnet/.net-tools/taming-sandcastle-a-.net-programmers-guide-to-documenting-your-code/) – gpinkas Dec 12 '12 at 16:55
  • You certainly *have* Visual Studio in your environment, don't you? I understand your wanting to automate your build process *outside* of the IDE. In fact, I *applaud* it. But you're not considering *eliminating* MSVS, are you? If not, then look at this: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/9b54865a%28v=vs.80%29.aspx – paulsm4 Dec 12 '12 at 18:14
  • I don't have VS in my environment and I don't plan to introduce it. I'm working on a Mac on an ASP.NET Application, which works perfectly without using VS. Since Microsoft "intended" the .NET framework as an open solution (free compiler, etc.), I just thought, there should be tools not relying on VS... There surely are people developing .NET on Linux, f.i. how do they document their code? – gpinkas Dec 13 '12 at 10:15
  • @gpinkas Well, XML documentation files are not generated by Visual Studio. They are generated by the C# compiler with the [/doc](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/3260k4x7.aspx) compiler option. So you can create those XML files without having VS. Hence, most of the tools you have mentioned are not relying on VS (but that doesn't mean they are platform-independent as well). – Balazs Tihanyi Feb 01 '13 at 13:29
  • Sorry, I forgot to accept this answer. I recently learned that the compiler produces the XML files needed for SHFB, this can also be done using f.i. SharpDevelop or otherwise. – gpinkas May 07 '13 at 14:37