XML Code Documentation

In the past we used NDoc to create API documentation of our sources. The NDoc project has been abandoned in 2007, but thankfully Microsoft has finally released a tool called 'Sandcastle' to generate help text from Visual Studio XML code comments.

This section explains how to generate EwE6 API help files from the EwE6 source code projects.

• Download and install Sandcastle ?here
• Sandcastle has no GUI front-end. For this, download and install Sandcastle Help File Builder ?here

Once Sandcastle and Sandcastle help file builder are installed, you can generate the EwE6 API help file:

• Open Sandcastle Help File Builder and load the EwE6 help file project. This project is included with the EwE6 sources at Ecopath6\Sources\Documentation\EwECore.shfbproj
• To Build documentation, Click on Documentation > Build Project
• To View documentation, Click on Documentation > View Help File > View Help File

The EwE6 API code documentation is automatically generated on a daily basis and is posted online. You can accessed this information  ?here.

Links

Lots of information is available on XML tags supported in Visual Studio. A few comprehensive links are:

• ?XML comments overview - Microsoft XML comments primer in C# syntaxis
• ?XML comments guidelines - XML comments usage guidelines
• ?Another overview - Somebody else did a better job at providing an overview than I.

Notes

• SandCastle? supports the <?inheritdoc cref="..."/> tag, which is a life saver!