Design
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JavaDoc

Some developers had for years attempted to do what javadoc does. I had a perl script that looked for special comments in my source code. A programmer I worked with had special tags that he parsed with AWK. However, neither of the efforts had the leverage of being able to parse the code along with the documentation, as does javadoc.

With the release of javadoc 1.2, JavaSoft has taken javadoc to yet another level with the introduction of 'doclets'. Doclets allows the developer to write Java code to handle the output of the documentation. This allows you to make very subtle changes to the output, such as a link to the source code, or major rennovations which completely change the output.

The GJT project leverages the new javadoc in several ways. First, we define a doclet that mimics the standard doclet with minor modifications to include a link the the version history of the file, and a link to the current source code.

Second, we generate the "PkgDoc Database", which is an inter-linked series of web pages that presents vital information about every package on the tree, as well as all of their inter-dependencies.

Finally, we leverage custom tags in the package documenation files defined by javadoc 1.2 to provide the information required for the PkgDoc database, as well as to drive the automated build process in terms of configuration and package dependencies.