How can I create .chm files from C# code?

Question

I used Doxygen to create HTML files, now I want to convert that documentation into .chm format.

How can I do this?

Answer 1

use NDoc

Answer 2

NDoc is a dead project, it's successor is Sandcastle & Sandcastle Helpfile Builder.

I've used both of the Sandcastle items. They're easy to setup, have decent documentation and chm file generation is native to the application. If you can switch, it would be a much better choice than doxygen.

Otherwise check out this link for HTML to chm info: http://younsi.blogspot.com/2007/04/doxygen-to-html-to-chm.html

Answer 3

ditto on sandcastle.

Answer 4

All you need besides Doxygen is the HTML Help compiler, which you can find on the Microsoft website.

You can then use Doxywizard to point Doxygen to the compiler executable (hhc.exe). Check the "GENERATE_HTMLHELP" box, choose a location to place the .chm file and you're good to go.

Answer 5

If you don't like having an external help compiler (for deployment you need to officially deploy the entire SDK afaik), there is also libchm, which is a Open Source C library that can write chms.

Delphi users might want to look at Free Pascal's paralel implementation of libchm, since a pascal solution makes it easier embeddable.

Answer 6

The original NDoc project is dead, but there is a new project called NDoc3.

NDoc3 supports .NET 2.0 - 3.5. It is currently available as a beta version and worked great for me. I'm not sure if the project is still active - the last beta was release in april 2009.