ROBODoc

This article is about the automated documentation tool. For the motion picture written by Doug and Scott Gordon MD and distributed by National Lampoon, see RoboDoc. For other uses, see Robodoc.

ROBODoc is a documentation tool similar to Javadoc and licensed under the GPL. It is used to extract API documentation from source code. It can be used with any language that supports comments and works by extracting specially formatted headers. These are then reformatted into HTML, DocBook, TROFF, ASCII, LaTeX, PDF, or RTF.

ROBODoc

Developer(s)	Frans Slothouber
Initial release	1994 (1994)
Stable release	4.99.44 / January 29, 2021 (2021-01-29)
Repository	github.com/gumpu/ROBODoc
Written in	C
Operating system	Linux, Windows, Mac OS, Solaris
Type	Documentation generator
License	GNU General Public License
Website	ROBODoc Homepage

It can be used to document any programming artifact, such as: classes, functions, tests, makefile entries, etc.

ROBODoc works with C, C++, Fortran, Perl, shell scripts, Assembler, DCL, DB/C, Tcl/Tk, Forth, Lisp, COBOL, Occam, Basic, HTML, Clarion, and any other language that supports comments.^{[citation needed]}

History

The first version of ROBODoc was written by Jacco van Weert in 1995. ROBODoc was inspired by the Autodocs program that was available on the Amiga. Autodocs produced ASCII output only. Jacco created a version that created output in Amigaguide format. This made it possible to create hyperlinks between the various documentation parts.

Example

A typical ROBODoc header

  /****f* Robodoc/RB_Panic [2.0d]
   * SYNOPSIS
   */
   
   void RB_Panic (char* cause, char *add_info)
   
  /*
   * FUNCTION
   *   Prints an error message.
   *   Frees all resources used by robodoc.
   *   Terminates program.
   * INPUTS
   *   * cause    - pointer to a string which describes the
   *                cause of the error.
   *   * add_info - pointer to a string with additional information.
   * SEE ALSO
   *   RB_Close_The_Shop ()
   * SOURCE
   */
    {
      printf ("Robodoc: Error, %s\n",cause) ;
      printf ("         %s\n", add_info) ;
      printf ("Robodoc: Panic Fatal error, closing down..\n") ;
      RB_Close_The_Shop () ; /* Free All Resources */
      exit(100) ;
    }
    
   /*******/

and the resulting output

See also

• Free and open-source software portal

• Comparison of documentation generators

External links

• ROBODoc Homepage
• ROBODoc git repository
• ROBODoc on SourceForge
• Documentation generator for gambas2 and Gambas3: Front-End for RoboDoc