How can I keep XML comments for method descriptions in a separate file ?

Question

This question stems from this question Code documentation how much is too much?

One the answers was to keep your xml documentation in a separate file. I really liked that answer as when I am looking through the code the verbosity of the documentation is annoying, on the other hand that verbosity is usefull when searching for the right method via intellisense or publishing the documentation.

The answer was to use the include tag

/// <include file="Documentation/XML/YourClass.xml" path="//documentation/members[@name='YourClass']/*"/>

There is also a MSDN article about the include tag here.

I figured out how to keep the summary information out, but I do not know and I couldn't find it how to put the method documentation there as well. (which is more important than the class summary itself.

Answer 1

The answer is simple. Read the produced xml files. They give an idea how the separated xml files should look like.

Reading the produced xml files and how method is described (with parameters and such):

<member name="M:BitFactory.Logging.Logger.DoLog(BitFactory.Logging.LogEntry)">
    <summary>
    Really log aLogEntry. (We are past filtering at this point.)
    Subclasses might want to do something more interesting and override this method.
    </summary>
    <param name="aLogEntry">The LogEntry to log</param>
    <returns>true upon success, false upon failure.</returns>
</member>

T, M, F prefixes Type, Method, Field.