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Source Code Extraction Tools

In general, tools that extract things from the code, sometimes called auto-documentation tools, are written by software developers for software developers. This means that the tools have already made most of the important decisions about what should be documented. And they can do their work automatically.

Although Doxygen (www.doxygen.org) is mentioned as an open-source solution to create reference documentation directly from the code, other tools are available.

I've run Doxygen on code that had no comments that Doxygen recognized. The HTML output (with no plain English) was still pretty impressive and better than I could have done by hand. Doxygen:

• Traces the code, something that I wouldn’t want to have to do by hand.

• Documents who is using what function, where that function resides, etc.

• Generates hierarchy diagrams.

• Hyperlinks to code items that it knows about when it comes across it other areas.

• Has optional features to show source code and also to hyperlink you to specific areas in the source code.

The framework that it builds should not be underestimated and would be really hard to create by hand in a (FrameMaker) manual.



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Open-Source tools compliments of Voyant Technologies, Inc. and Glenn C. Maxey.
01/13/2003

TP Tools v2-00-0a

# tpt-hug-02