2.8. Documentation and Valadoc.org

Valadoc.org is often the first website a Vala developer visits when seeking how to use a binding. A new VAPI committed to Vala Extra VAPIs can be added to Valadoc.org by adding the VAPI to the list of downloaded packages at Valadoc.org and submitting a pull request to the Valadoc.org repository. See thelibcolumbus pull request as an example.

Valadoc.org is frequently re-generated. When Valadoc.org is re-generated VAPIs are pulled in from vala-extra-vapis and documentation generated from them. If no documentation comments are associated with a VAPI then Valadoc.org will only show the symbols in the VAPI.

Add a documentation comment before a symbol in the VAPI. A documentation comment is a C multiline comment with an additional asterisk:

/**
 * Brief description of class Foo
 *
 * Long description of class Foo, which can include an example
 */
[CCode (cname = "foo", ref_function = "foo_retain", unref_function = "foo_release")]
[Compact]
public class Foo {
    // Details of binding
}

The comments can include additional markup. Details are at Valadoc Comment Markup.

The documentation can be generated locally to test how it will appear. First, download and build valadoc:

git clone git://git.gnome.org/valadoc
cd valadoc
./autogen.sh
make
make install

Second, generate the documentation:

cd my_binding_directory
valadoc --directory docs --force --package-name mybinding mybinding.vapi

This will generate the HTML documentation in the docs directory. valadoc expects the docs directory to not exist, but --force overrides this. --package-name mybinding will create a sub-directory called mybinding in docs that contains the generated documentation for mybinding.vapi.

The locally generated documentation will have the same structure as valadoc.org, although the visual styling may differ.