Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] better docs for GRC

[Eric Blossom]

On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 03:03:46PM -0400, Josh Blum wrote:
> Hey,
>
> I am interesting in creating some kind of auto-generated docs for grc. 

Sounds like a great idea.

> Currently, each block has a custom description or a description copy/pasted 
> from the html doxygen stuff.
>
> While some custom descriptions are necessary, it would be nice to be able 
> to grab this other information about blocks and block parameters from the 
> doxygen docs.
>
> It seems doxygen can create an xml output file with "all" the information. 
> I would like to take a look at this doxygen-xml output. Do we currently 
> generate it when this: http://gnuradio.org/doc/doxygen/ is made? Available 
> for download? If not, where is the doxygen config file located so I can 
> modify it and generate this output myself?

It's currently disabled, but we could turn it back on.
See gnuradio-core/doc/Doxygen.in

    # If the GENERATE_XML tag is set to YES Doxygen will 
    # generate an XML file that captures the structure of 
    # the code including all documentation.

    GENERATE_XML           = NO


> Assuming this doxygen xml file is what I think it is: GRC could get a hold 
> of it in 2 ways: 1) if a user wants their grc to have docs, they have to 
> --enable-doxygen or 2) the grc setup script could download said xml file 
> from gnuradio.org and install it in a known location.
>
> I prefer #2. Any thoughts on this approach? Alternative ideas?

I think #2's problematic since the XML would always be out of date,
and might not match the version of GR that the user has installed.
However, if you want to generate the XML and store it somewhere on
gnuradio.org, we can arrange that.

Eric