Developer Documentation Documenting code in Apache 2.4

Apache 2.4 uses Doxygen to document the APIs and global variables in the code. This will explain the basics of how to document using Doxygen.

Brief Description

To start a documentation block, use /**
To end a documentation block, use */

In the middle of the block, there are multiple tags we can use:

Description of this functions purpose
@param parameter_name description
@return description
@deffunc signature of the function

The deffunc is not always necessary. DoxyGen does not have a full parser in it, so any prototype that use a macro in the return type declaration is too complex for scandoc. Those functions require a deffunc. An example (using > rather than >):

/**
 * return the final element of the pathname
 * @param pathname The path to get the final element of
 * @return the final element of the path
 * @tip Examples:
 * <pre>
 * "/foo/bar/gum" -&gt; "gum"
 * "/foo/bar/gum/" -&gt; ""
 * "gum" -&gt; "gum"
 * "wi\\n32\\stuff" -&gt; "stuff"
 * </pre>
 * @deffunc const char * ap_filename_of_pathname(const char *pathname)
 */

At the top of the header file, always include:

/**
 * @package Name of library header
 */

Doxygen uses a new HTML file for each package. The HTML files are named {Name_of_library_header}.html, so try to be concise with your names.

For a further discussion of the possibilities please refer to the Doxygen site.