Software:Documentation generator

Short description: Software tool

A documentation generator is a programming tool that generates software documentation intended for programmers (API documentation) or end users (end-user guide), or both, from a set of source code files, and in some cases, binary files. Some generators, such as Javadoc, can use special comments to drive the generation. Doxygen 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

Some integrated development environments provide interactive access to documentation, code metadata, etc.

Static site and multi-schema documentation generators

Modern documentation pipelines frequently combine prose authoring with machine-readable API and protocol specifications to produce static HTML websites:

• Prose-oriented static generators: Tools such as MkDocs and Sphinx compile Markdown or reStructuredText guides into searchable static HTML sites.
• Source-comment extractors: Tools such as Doxygen, Javadoc, and JSDoc parse structured annotations embedded in source code to produce reference documentation and XML or HTML output.
• Multi-input static documentation generators: Open-source generators such as Sourcey (source) combine OpenAPI descriptions, Model Context Protocol (MCP) schemas, Doxygen XML, godoc, rustdoc, and Markdown guides into a single static documentation site alongside machine-readable llms.txt indices for automated agents.

See also

• Comparison of documentation generators
• Template processor
• Static code analysis
• Literate programming
• Integrated development environment