Docco VS Doxygen

Docco

Docco is a quick-and-dirty, hundred-line-long, literate-programming-style documentation generator.

Doxygen

Generate documentation from source code

Landing page //
2020-01-07

Landing page //
2023-07-30

Docco

Website: ashkenas.com
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Release Date: -

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Doxygen

Website: doxygen.nl
$ Details: -
Release Date: 2022 October

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Docco features and specs

No features have been listed yet.

Doxygen features and specs

Comprehensive Documentation
Doxygen supports a wide range of languages and can generate detailed, organized documentation for various types of codebases, including class hierarchies, collaboration diagrams, and more.
Automatic Code Parsing
Doxygen automatically parses the code and extracts relevant comments, which helps in creating accurate and up-to-date documentation without much manual intervention.
Customizable Output
Doxygen allows customization of the output format with several templates, enabling developers to generate documentation in HTML, LaTeX, RTF, and other formats.
Integration with Other Tools
Doxygen integrates well with other tools such as Graphviz for generating diagrams, and it can be incorporated into continuous integration pipelines to ensure documentation is always current.
Open Source
Doxygen is open-source software, meaning it is free to use and has a community of contributors that may add features or fix issues over time.

Possible disadvantages of Doxygen

Steep Learning Curve
Due to its extensive features and customization options, Doxygen can be quite complex to set up and use effectively, especially for beginners.
Performance Issues
For very large codebases, Doxygen can be slow in processing and generating the documentation, which might be a limitation for some projects.
Limited Support for Non-Standard Code Constructs
Doxygen may have difficulties interpreting non-standard code constructs or highly complex code, which could lead to incomplete or inaccurate documentation.
Dependency on Code Comments
The quality and usefulness of the generated documentation heavily depend on the thoroughness and clarity of the comments within the code, requiring disciplined commenting practices.
Outdated Documentation
If not regularly maintained and regenerated, the produced documentation can become outdated as the codebase evolves, leading to potential misinformation.

Analysis of Doxygen

Overall verdict

Yes, Doxygen is considered a good tool, especially for projects where maintaining documentation is crucial. Its ability to integrate with various development environments and version control systems, along with its configurability and range of output formats, makes it a robust choice for automatically generating up-to-date project documentation.

Why this product is good

Doxygen is a widely used tool for generating documentation from annotated C++ sources, and it supports other programming languages including C, Objective-C, C#, PHP, Java, Python, IDL (Corba and Microsoft flavors), Fortran, VHDL, and D. It is valuable for its ability to extract code structure and comments to produce comprehensive documentation in various formats like HTML, LaTeX, and RTF. It also has support for generating diagrams and cross-references, which improves documentation readability and navigation.

Recommended for

Developers working in medium to large codebases that need robust documentation.
Teams using C++ or any of the supported languages who want to ensure their code documentation is consistently updated and accessible.
Projects where it is crucial to have an easily navigable documentation site with features like search, diagrams, and cross-references.
Open source projects that want to maintain high-quality, automatically generated documentation.

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Doxygen

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Docco and Doxygen)

Doxygen

Documentation

5 5%

Documentation

95% 95

Knowledge Base

7 7%

Knowledge Base

93% 93

Documentation As A Service & Tools

6 6%

Documentation As A Service & Tools

94% 94

Knowledge Management

100 100%

Knowledge Management

0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Docco and Doxygen

Docco Reviews

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Doxygen Reviews

Best 25 Software Documentation Tools 2023

Doxygen is a popular documentation generator tool that is commonly used in software development projects to automatically generate documentation from source code comments.

Source: www.uphint.com

Introduction to Doxygen Alternatives In 2021

Doxygen is the software application for developing paperwork from illustrated C++ sources, but other programming languages like C, C#, Objective-C, UNO/OpenOffice, PHP, Java, IDL of Corba, Python, and Microsoft, VHDL, Fortran are also supported. From a collection of recorded source files, user can develop an HTML online documents web browser and an offline referral manual....

Source: www.webku.net

Doxygen Alternatives

Doxygen is the software for creating documentation from illustrated C++ sources, but other programming languages like C, C#, Objective-C, UNO/OpenOffice, PHP, Java, IDL of Corba, Python, and Microsoft, VHDL, Fortran are also supported. From a collection of documented source files, user can create an HTML online documentation browser and an offline reference manual. It also...

Source: www.educba.com

Doxygen Alternatives

Since the documentation is directly extracted from the sources, it is a lot less difficult to maintain the compatibility between the source code and the documentation. Having said that, this tax has a few problems with it. Therefore, I have compiled a list of some of the other options available to you besides Doxygen.

Source: www.ameerpet.org

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Docco seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 1 time since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Docco mentions (1)

Lisp.py
Side note - it's been a while since I've seen a Docco-style annotated-source-style documentation! http://ashkenas.com/docco/ Backbone.js was the first time I saw it, and I loved it! https://backbonejs.org/docs/backbone.html It demonstrated to me that the libraries I use are just normal code that other people write, and I myself can read it to understand a problem. - Source: Hacker News / almost 3 years ago