Supported Markups

All comments in your code must be formatted in a doxygen-compliant way so that doxygen can do its job. Doxygen provides support for formatting your text with tags, such as \b for adding bold text, this information appears in the xml output and Breathe attempts to reproduce it accurately.

In addition to this, is it possible to add reStructuredText into your comments within appropriately demarcated sections.

reStructuredText

Breathe supports reStructuredText within doxygen verbatim blocks which begin with the markup embed:rst. This means that a comment block like this:

/*!
Inserting additional reStructuredText information.
\verbatim embed:rst
.. note::

   This reStructuredText has been handled correctly.
\endverbatim
*/

Will be rendered as:

virtual void TestClass::rawVerbatim() const = 0

Inserting additional reStructuredText information.

Note

This reStructuredText has been handled correctly.

Handling Leading Asterisks

Note that doxygen captures all content in a verbatim block. This can be rather an annoyance if you use a leading-asterisk style of comment block such as the following:

/*!
 * Inserting additional reStructuredText information.
 *
 * \verbatim embed:rst
 *     Some example code::
 *
 *        int example(int x) {
 *            return x * 2;
 *        }
 * \endverbatim
 */

As the leading asterisks are captured in the verbatim block this will appear to be an incorrectly formatted bullet list. Due to the syntactical problems Sphinx will issue warnings and the block will render as:

void rawBadAsteriskVerbatim()

Inserting additional reStructuredText information.

• Some example code:

• int example(int x) {

• return x * 2;

• }

To prevent this, use an embed:rst:leading-asterisk tag:

/*!
 * Inserting additional reStructuredText information.
 *
 * \verbatim embed:rst:leading-asterisk
 *     Some example code::
 *
 *        int example(int x) {
 *            return x * 2;
 *        }
 * \endverbatim
 */

This will appropriately handle the leading asterisks and render as:

---

virtual void TestClass::rawLeadingAsteriskVerbatim() const = 0

Inserting additional reStructuredText information.

Some example code:

int example(int x) {
    return x   2;
}

---

Handling Leading Slashes

Similar troubles can be encountered when using comment blocks that start with a triple forward slash. For example:

/// Some kind of method
///
/// @param something a parameter
/// @returns the same value provided in something param
///
/// @verbatim embed:rst:leading-slashes
///    .. code-block:: c
///       :linenos:
///
///       bool foo(bool something) {
///           return something;
///       };
///
/// @endverbatim

For these kinds of blocks, you can use an embed:rst:leading-slashes tag as shown in the above example.

This will appropriately handle the leading slashes and render as:

---

virtual void TestClass::rawLeadingSlashesVerbatim(int something) const = 0

Some kind of method

@param something a parameter
@returns the same value provided in something param

@verbatim embed:rst:leading-slashes

/// .. code-block:: c /// :linenos: /// /// bool foo(bool something) { /// return something; /// }; /// ///

---

Inline rST

Normal verbatim elements result in block elements. But sometimes you’ll want to generate rST references where they need to be rendered inline with the text. For example:

/// Some kind of method
///
/// @param something a parameter
/// @returns the same value provided in something param
///
/// @verbatim embed:rst:inline some inline text @endverbatim

For these kinds of references, you can use an embed:rst:inline tag as shown in the above example.

This will appropriately handle the leading slashes and render as:

---

virtual void TestClass::rawInlineVerbatim() const = 0

Inserting an inline reStructuredText snippet. Linking to another function: TestClass::rawVerbatim()

virtual void TestClass::rawVerbatim() const = 0

---

Aliases

To make these blocks appears as more appropriate doxygen-like markup in your comments you can add the following aliases to your doxygen configuration file:

ALIASES = "rst=\verbatim embed:rst"
ALIASES += "endrst=\endverbatim"

And, if you use leading asterisks then perhaps:

ALIASES += "rststar=\verbatim embed:rst:leading-asterisk"
ALIASES += "endrststar=\endverbatim"

Which allow you to write comments like:

/*!
Inserting additional reStructuredText information.

\rst

This is some funky non-xml compliant text: <& !><

.. note::

   This reStructuredText has been handled correctly.
\endrst

This is just a standard verbatim block with code:

\verbatim
    child = 0;
    while( child = parent->IterateChildren( child ) )
\endverbatim

*/

Which will be rendered as:

virtual void TestClass::function() const = 0

Inserting additional reStructuredText information.

This is some funky non-XML compliant text: <& !><

This is just a standard verbatim block with code:

    child = 0;
    while( child = parent->IterateChildren( child ) )

Note

This reStructuredText has been handled correctly.