Re: [boost] Boost Cmake Modules

Subject: Re: [boost] Boost Cmake Modules
From: Niall Douglas (s_sourceforge_at_[hidden])
Date: 2017-01-13 06:11:58

>> If anybody knows of a tool which can understand doxygen markup but 
>> generates much better reference docs, I would be *extremely*
>> interested. The really key part is that new C++ docs tooling
>> *needs* to grok doxygen markup. So many new tools don't, and
>> therefore get no traction because so many C++ codebases are locked
>> into doxygen markup.
> 
> I agree that I don't find the C++ output from Doxygen itself
> attractive (though it is partly a look'n'feel prejudice).

It's also that the XML output is structured in a very unhelpful way for
any other tool to consume. It's almost easier to write a libclang parser
and work from the generated AST, that's the structure you actually need.

> But I've saying for years that the really important 'standard' is the
> Doxygen-comment-syntax or markup.
> [snip]
> How do we focus new tool builders attention on starting from the
> right place?

As with a lot of other parts of the C++ ecosystem, a decent C++
reference documentation generator commensurate with what almost every
other major programming language already has is too big a project for
open source to deliver without commercial sponsorship. You need to bring
together two or three very experienced (i.e. expensive) C++ developers
who know exactly what needs to be done and employ them on this for a
year or two until it's done and shipped with every major C++ compiler.

This is exactly the kind of basic infrastructure stuff I think the C++
Standards Foundation needs to sponsor. In a conversation I had with
Bjarne he agreed, but as much as $500k is a rounding error for most
corporations, getting them to pony up for stuff which improves a whole
ecosystem without a direct and immediate benefit to them has proven to
be very hard, and again quite unlike in most other programming languages
where a central guardianship enforces funds to be given to it to be
spent on what's best for the language ecosystem, not on what's best for
the donor. Sponsoring Eric with Ranges v3 was a lucky once off not
expected currently to be repeated (unfortunately).

Niall

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