Doxygen + CMake

Introduction

Doxygen and CMake are two powerful tools that are commonly used in software development. Doxygen is a documentation generator that can be used to create documentation for a wide range of programming languages and code structures. CMake, on the other hand, is an open-source build system generator that can be used to build, test, and package software projects.

Doxygen and CMake can be used together to simplify the process of generating documentation for C++ code. CMake can be used to generate the build system for the project and Doxygen can be used to generate the documentation. In this tutorial, we will explore the process of using Doxygen and CMake to generate documentation for a C++ project.

Setting Up CMake

Before we can use Doxygen with CMake, we need to set up the CMake project.

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.10)
project(MyProject)
set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 11)

# Add your source files here
set(SOURCES
    src/main.cpp
    src/myclass.cpp
)

# Add your header files here
set(HEADERS
    include/myclass.h
)

add_executable(MyProject ${SOURCES} ${HEADERS})

Generating Documentation with Doxygen

Next, we need to create a configuration file for Doxygen.

set(DOXYGEN_IN ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/Doxyfile.in)
set(DOXYGEN_OUT ${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}/Doxyfile)
configure_file(${DOXYGEN_IN} ${DOXYGEN_OUT} @ONLY)

add_custom_target(${PROJECT_NAME}_doc
    COMMAND ${DOXYGEN_EXECUTABLE} ${DOXYGEN_OUT}
    WORKING_DIRECTORY ${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}
    COMMENT "Generating API documentation with Doxygen"
    VERBATIM
)

In this code snippet, we are creating a custom target called ${PROJECT_NAME}_doc. This target will run Doxygen to generate the documentation. We are also specifying the location of the configuration file for Doxygen (Doxyfile.in) and the output file (Doxyfile). Finally, we are configuring the configuration file with the correct input and output files, and then running Doxygen with the configuration file.

Conclusion

By using Doxygen and CMake together, we can simplify the process of generating documentation for our C++ projects. CMake can be used to generate the build system for the project, while Doxygen can be used to generate the documentation. This allows us to easily keep our documentation up to date as the code changes.