Source Documentation Tools

MAKR 2004-11-18:

I noticed - and came across the same problem - people on comp.lang.tcl are regularly asking for tools to automatically generate documentation from source code. It seems no page is currently dedicated to maintain a list of tools available for Tcl.

See Also

Literate Programming

another approach to document generation, where the documentation is the primary content, and the program must be extracted from it. Not as popular as document extraction, but advocated by Donald Knuth.

Tcl Style Guide

Contains a couple of recommendations about documentation near the end of the page.

GSoC Idea: Auto Documentation Tool for Tcl

a 2011 project proposal in this direction

docbook

However, I'm uncertain how much use of docbook occurs in the tcl development community efforts to document tcl.

Tools

autodoc

ddoc

docextract

extracting doctools text from source files

docstring

using leading comment in proc bodies

docstrip

docstrip and tclldoc

Literate programming the scripting way

doctools

A more generic markup language tool. Targets multiple presentation formats.

doxygen

documentation tool; has tcl support starting with version 1.7.5 (see doxygen+tcl) and can be used for tcl with a filter/pre-processor [L1 ] [L2 ] A little doxygen converter

HelpSystem

interactive help doc embedded into tcl/tk code - kind of different

   [mkdoc::mkdoc]: Embed code documentation in Markdown into programming languages like Perl, R, Tcl, Python or C++. Singe file command line application or can be used as Tcl package

robodoc

Ruff!

generates documentation via runtime introspection

Sdoc

• nroff man macro style - by far the most common. Requires some kind of tool to either format or to convert into another form

Simpledoc

very simple: generates HTML from source with markup in comments.

src2tex

tcl2tex

tcldoc

similar to javadoc

tdoc

TL

this is a glue language that has auto documentation functions

TMML

this is more a generic markup language tool

tna

tycho

this GUI itcl dev environment included a system to create HTML from itcl classes

zdoc

feathers: an hand-written documents tool

NaturalDocs

attempts to parse code docs written in a very natural manner

XOTcl Documentation Tool

Development Tools

ParseTools

extension that can be used to write documentation extractors

Discussion

escargo 2005-04-21: One thing to keep in mind with these tools is that some of them might be used with OO systems that extend the Tcl syntax, Snit for example. Now, instead of just need to track proc definitions, namespaces, and global variables, you might want to keep track of classes, methods, typemethods, and other interesting extended Tcl syntax. I haven't looked at all of these tools, but I know that robodoc made it possible to handle pretty arbitrary things to track and document.

MAKR 2006-12-08: Half a year ago I decided to move over to robodoc. I now have all in-source documentation (C and Tcl) converted to this format. This was one of the best ideas I ever had. The commentary in the sources is clean and readable. The resulting HTML documentation is it too. You can format it to your liking using CSS...

escargo: Do you use any OO extensions, or just plain Tcl/Tk?

MAKR 2006-12-13: As it gets tool specific, I continue at the robodoc page ...

MAKR 2007-12-14: just stumbled over discussions about the Tcl user documentation project and also saw an What you need to know to write man pages , by Peter Seebach, 2004-02-10, at c.l.t. about how to write manpages.

Lorance: Since I have used Perl POD for years I decided I Should use that for Tcl. I have added embedded POD support to my personal tcl.vim syntax file. See my Github Repository for more information (The Wiki has screenshots).

MHo - 2020-11-16 22:32:49

IMHO This page is a good example for the situation of Tcl/Tk:

Where other languages or eco systems have only one, or sometimes two or three solutions, the tcl community offers 50. But to decide which one you should use, you often spend a whole evening, looking sometimes at 404's, at "no longer maintained"-Messages, or at something like "only works under this and that circumstances...", "work in progress", etc.

Not that I am misunderstood: after "studying" a lot of languages I still vote Tcl/Tk as one of the best, if not Nr One. Simplicity and flexibility is unbeaten, deployment via starkits and starpacks as simple and mighty as it can be all together, robustness is great, errors are rare, performance very good in many scenarios.

But, what the hell, why isn't this ingenious language more popular after all?