Documenting functions in C++ with Doxygen

c++ doxygen non-member-functions
Paul picture Paul · May 8, 2010 · Viewed 38.9k times · Source

I've got a project that I'm using Doxygen to generate documentation for. The documentation of the classes is fine, but I've also got some non-member functions that I use to create objects etc. I'd also like to have these documented, but no matter what I try, Doxygen will not generate documentation from the comments that I have placed above the functions. Why won't Doxygen generate documentation for functions in the global namespace, and what do I need to do to get this to work?

Answer

Oktalist picture Oktalist · Aug 31, 2012

Entities that are members of classes are only documented if their class is documented. Entities declared at namespace scope are only documented if their namespace is documented. Entities declared at file scope are only documented if their file is documented.

So to document a free function in the global namespace you also need a line like this somewhere in the header file in which it is declared:

/** @file */

Or like this:

/*! \file */

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