AppCode 2018.1 Help

Creating and Viewing AppleDoc/HeaderDoc/Doxygen Documentation

AppleDoc/HeaderDoc/Doxygen documentation comments can be placed across the source code and used for generating full-fledged documentation in various formats. In case you have a project documented this way, you can easily run documentation tool from the built-in terminal in AppCode. Besides, AppCode enables you to get more value out of the documentation comments inside the IDE itself.

AppCode includes the information from the documentation comments into the Quick Documentation pop-up (N/A):

Viewing documentation

Information from documentation comments is included in Quick Documentation pop-up in addition to the type information. To invoke the documentation pop-up:

  1. Place the caret at the desired symbol or at the @param command of the documentation comment.

  2. Press N/A.

Alternatively, when the checkbox Show quick doc on mouse move in the editor settings is selected, just move your mouse pointer over the desired symbol.

If function parameters are documented separately from the function description, AppCode will merge all the comments and show you the full function’s signature documentation (the same way as Doxygen does when generating the output).

Creating comments from scratch

To create a documentation comment from scratch:

  1. Type one of the following symbols: ///, //!, /** or /*! and press N/A.

  2. You will get a stub to fill with the documentation text:

Reliable rename

While renaming a function or its parameters, the documentation comments need to be updated accordingly. In case of Rename refactoring, AppCode updates documentation comments along with other references.

Typing assistance

Basic typing assistance for documentation commands is provisioned by AppCode auto-complete feature:

Note that this feature is currently available for only for Objective-C/C/C++ and only common commands for AppleDoc/HeaderDoc/Doxygen are available in the completion.

Last modified: 19 September 2019