I'll try this again with a subject this time. :-)
About a year
ago, I wrote asking if anyone would be interested in a plugin that would satisfy
the following:
1) Generate javadoc HTML without a javadoc.exe on
your path (avoid having to launch/wait on the OS's javadoc.exe process)
2)
Provide an extension point to allow a client to define custom HTML handlers for
their custom tags
3) Provide a codebase that is extensible by clients to
write their own javadoc documents or customize the way that the HTML document is
generated
4) Available under an open EPL license
I mocked up
such a tool and proved that it is possible to use the JDT to accomplish
the tasks. I would say that it is 60% of the way to meeting its goals. Mostly it
is just lacking performance optimizations and 100% of the HTML documentation
features of the javadoc.exe. The results already appear very similar to the HTML
generated by the javadoc.exe with the standard doclet.
First of
all, I was wondering whether there are any users interested in this
tool?
I don't have the time at the moment to maintain this tool. Is
there anyone interested in taking the code and making it polished enough to be
part of the JDT in the future?
Some interesting future
possibilities for this tool:
- Eclipse PDE entity support (Extensions,
Extension Points and Dependencies seemlessly integrated into the Javadoc
experience)
- Incremental rendering (the builder could simply regenerate only
those HTML files that are affected by changes to java source or
javadoc)
Thanks,
Chris McGee
cbmcgee@xxxxxxxxxx