C# documentation generator?

Question

Is there any kind of documentation generator for C#? Like something that would put the xml-ish documentation right above the method/class declarations? Is there a tool or is it tucked away somewhere in VS 2008?

Answer 1

I recommend you to give a look to SandCastle. It generates class library documentation from .NET assemblies and the XML documentation files generated by the C# compiler. You may want to use the SandCastle GUI tools, SHFB, SandCastleGUI or DocProject which will ease completely the document generation process.

Also give a look to the recommended and allowed XML tags.

Update: I agree with the Matt's comment, NDoc is almost a dead project, and remember that you could use also the old XSLT way.

Answer 2

You can start a comment with /// right above a class or class member and VS will insert some template documentation tags for you.

Answer 3

I quite like GhostDoc

GhostDoc is a free add-in for Visual Studio that automatically generates XML documentation comments for C#. Either by using existing documentation inherited from base classes or implemented interfaces, or by deducing comments from name and type of e.g. methods, properties or parameters.

Basically it generates the /// comments above the methods, class, etc for you. They're not perfect but provide a good starting point.

Answer 4

As per Ray's suggestion, GhostDoc is handy, although it can lead to boilerplate docs without substance if developers are lazy.

As for publishing your docs...forget NDoc, it's a dead project.

Sandcastle is actively supported by Microsoft. You document using standard C# tags. It has multiple output formats and plenty of flexibility. Just give whatever box you build docs on plenty of RAM.

I recommend SHFB to make life easy with Sandcastle. Modeled after NDoc and works via GUI or command line.

Answer 5

As others have said, if you want to generate the comments in your code you should have a look at GhostDoc.

As for outputting the comments into something nice. I recently started an open-source project for generating documentation for .Net apps, as an alternative to Sandcastle. I don't want to get into the hows or whys I've done such a thing here, but you might want to check it out. It's early days yet, but it's making steady progress.

Docu - simple documentation done simply

Answer 6

GhostDoc is great, but I did have a rant about adding comments some time ago. If you are going to add comments, make them usefull!.

Answer 7

Now (over a year later) there is NDoc3. Very easy to use.

Answer 8

Live Documenter is a free documentation tool from The Box Software.