73 lines
2.7 KiB
Markdown
73 lines
2.7 KiB
Markdown
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% Rust Documentation
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`rustdoc` is the built-in tool for generating documentation. It integrates
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with the compiler to provide accurate hyperlinking between usage of types and
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their documentation. Furthermore, by not using a separate parser, it will
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never reject your valid Rust code.
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# Creating Documentation
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Documenting Rust APIs is quite simple. To document a given item, we have "doc
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comments":
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~~~
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// the "link" crate attribute is currently required for rustdoc, but normally
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// isn't needed.
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#[link(name="universe")];
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#[crate_type="lib"];
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//! Tools for dealing with universes (this is a doc comment, and is shown on
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//! the crate index page. The ! makes it apply to the parent of the comment,
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//! rather than what follows).
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/// Widgets are very common (this is a doc comment, and will show up on
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/// Widget's documentation).
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pub struct Widget {
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/// All widgets have a purpose (this is a doc comment, and will show up
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/// the field's documentation).
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purpose: ~str,
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/// Humans are not allowed to understand some widgets
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understandable: bool
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}
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pub fn recalibrate() {
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//! Recalibrate a pesky universe (this is also a doc comment, like above,
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//! the documentation will be applied to the *parent* item, so
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//! `recalibrate`).
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/* ... */
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}
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~~~
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Then, one can run `rustdoc universe.rs`. By default, it generates a directory
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called `doc`, with the documentation for `universe` being in
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`doc/universe/index.html`. If you are using other crates with `extern mod`,
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rustdoc will even link to them when you use their types, as long as their
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documentation has already been generated by a previous run of rustdoc, or the
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crate advertises that its documentation is hosted at a given URL.
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The generated output can be controlled with the `doc` crate attribute, which
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is how the above advertisement works. An example from the `libstd`
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documentation:
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~~~
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#[doc(html_logo_url = "http://www.rust-lang.org/logos/rust-logo-128x128-blk.png",
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html_favicon_url = "http://www.rust-lang.org/favicon.ico",
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html_root_url = "http://static.rust-lang.org/doc/master")];
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~~~
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The `html_root_url` is the prefix that rustdoc will apply to any references to
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that crate's types etc.
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rustdoc can also generate JSON, for consumption by other tools, with
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`rustdoc --output-format json`, and also consume already-generated JSON with
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`rustdoc --input-format json`.
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# Using the Documentation
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The web pages generated by rustdoc present the same logical heirarchy that one
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writes a library with. Every kind of item (function, struct, etc) has its own
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color, and one can always click on a colored type to jump to its
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documentation. There is a search bar at the top, which is powered by some
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javascript and a statically-generated search index. No special web server is
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required for the search.
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