This is a documentation generator plugin for the Google Protocol Buffers compiler
(protoc). The plugin can generate HTML, DocBook or Markdown documentation from
comments in your .proto files.
- Debian
- Ubuntu
- openSUSE
- Fedora
- Arch Linux
- CentOS 7 (x86_64 only)
- Windows
- Build From Source
Use /** */ or /// comments to document your files. Comments for files go at the
very top of the the file. Comments for enumerations, messages and services go before
the message, enumeration or service definition. Comments for fields, enum values,
extensions and service methods can go either before or after the definition. If a
documentation comment begins with @exclude, the corresponding item will be excluded
from the generated documentation.
The plugin is invoked by passing the --doc_out option to the protoc compiler. The
option has the following format:
--doc_out=docbook|html|markdown|<TEMPLATE_FILENAME>,<OUT_FILENAME>[,no-exclude]:<OUT_DIR>
The format may be one of the built-in ones ( docbook, html or markdown) or the
name of a file containing a custom Mustache template. For example, to
generate HTML documentation for all .proto files in the proto directory into
doc/index.html, type:
protoc --doc_out=html,index.html:doc proto/*.proto
The plugin executable must be in PATH or specified explicitly using the --plugin
option in order for protoc to find it. If you need support for a custom output
format, see Custom Templates. If you just want to customize the look of the
HTML output, put your CSS in stylesheet.css next to the output file and it will be
picked up. If the optional no-exclude flag is given, all @exclude directives are
ignored.
With the input .proto files
the plugin gives the output
- Markdown
- HTML
- DocBook
- PDF (Using Apache FOP)
Look in examples/Makefile to see how these outputs were built.