## Using HeaderDoc

The BioCocoa Project uses Apple's HeaderDoc tools to an HTML based API documentation from comments embedded in the source code. To transform the HeaderDoc information into a html format, the BioCocoa Xcode project provides a script that will automatically generate the html docs. To activate the script, open the BioCocoa target in the left panel in Xcode, and select 'Shell Script Files'. Then click the Info button (Command-I), and unselect the 'Run script only during deployment builds'. Now rebuild the framework, and a new directory will be generated in the BioCocoa directory on your local harddisk. Note that for now the documentation will not be added to the Xcode project.

Alternatively, you can generate the html pages from the command line. The advantage of running these commands from the command line is that you can see from the output in the terminal if there are any errors in the HeaderDoc entries. First cd into the root level of the BioCocoa project on your HD. Then issue the following commands:

    mkdir -p Documentation

    headerdoc2html -o Documentation BCFoundation

    headerdoc2html -o Documentation BCAppKit

    gatherheaderdoc Documentation

The `gatherheaderdoc` command will fail if there is a space in the path to the BioCocoa directory. You can read the generated html by opening the file MasterTOC.html in the Documentation folder.

For more information on the use of HeaderDoc, type `man headerdoc2html` or `man gatherheaderdoc`. Another good source is the Apple documentation. An alternative to HeaderDoc that we could look into is Doxygen.

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