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
 *
 *     .. code-block:: cpp
 *
 *        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
/// @note Documentation using `///` should begin and end in a blank line.

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.

bool foo(bool something) {
    return something;
};

Note

Documentation using /// should begin and end in a blank line.

Parameters:: something – a parameter

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 appear 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"

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.

Note

The character sequence ^^ in an ALIAS definition inserts a line break. The leading ^^ ensures that a RST \verbatim block never starts in a brief description (which would break the output), even if you put it on the first line of a comment. The trailing ^^ allows to start with RST content on the same line of the \rst command.

The ALIAS given above only works for comment blocks without a leading comment character on each line. If you use a comment style with a leading comment character on each new line, use these aliases instead:

ALIASES = "rst=^^\verbatim embed:rst:leading-asterisk^^"
ALIASES += "endrst=\endverbatim"

Due to an undocumented behavior in doxygen, all leading comment characters (*, /// or //!) encountered in a verbatim section will be converted to asterisk (* ) by Doxygen, when \verbatim is part of an alias. Therefore, the ALIAS above works in all comment blocks with leading line comment characters.

If you want to hide reStructuredText output from Doxygen html and only include it in sphinx, use the Doxygen command \xmlonly. This is an example alias that enables all RST sections in XML only:

ALIASES = "rst=^^\xmlonly<verbatim>embed:rst:leading-asterisk^^"
ALIASES += "endrst=</verbatim>\endxmlonly"