Documentation for the GNU C++ Library is created from three independent sources: a manual, a FAQ, and an API reference.
      The sub-directory doc
      within the main source directory contains
      Makefile.am and
      Makefile.in, which provide rules for
      generating documentation, described in excruciating detail
      below. The doc
      sub-directory also contains three directories: doxygen, which contains scripts and
      fragments for doxygen, html, which contains an html
      version of the manual, and xml, which contains an xml version
      of the manual.
    
Diverging from established documentation conventions in the rest of the GCC project, libstdc++ does not use Texinfo as a markup language. Instead, Docbook is used to create the manual and the FAQ, and Doxygen is used to construct the API reference. Although divergent, this conforms to the GNU Project recommendations as long as the output is of sufficient quality, as per GNU Manuals.
      Certain Makefile rules are required by the GNU Coding
      Standards. These standard rules generate HTML, PDF, XML, or man
      files. For each of the generative rules, there is an additional
      install rule that is used to install any generated documentation
      files into the prescribed installation directory. Files are
      installed into share/doc
      or share/man directories.
    
The standard Makefile rules are conditionally supported, based on the results of examining the host environment for prerequisites at configuration time. If requirements are not found, the rule is aliased to a dummy rule that does nothing, and produces no documentation. If the requirements are found, the rule forwards to a private rule that produces the requested documentation.
      For more details on what prerequisites were found and where,
      please consult the file config.log in the
      libstdc++ build directory. Compare this log to what is expected
      for the relevant Makefile conditionals:
      BUILD_INFO, BUILD_XML,
      BUILD_HTML, BUILD_MAN,
      BUILD_PDF, and BUILD_EPUB.
    
Supported Makefile rules:
Generates multi-page HTML documentation, and installs it in the following directories:
	    
	      doc/libstdc++/libstdc++-api.html
	    
	  
	    
	      doc/libstdc++/libstdc++-manual.html
	    
	  
Generates indexed PDF documentation, and installs it as the following files:
	    doc/libstdc++/libstdc++-api.pdf
	  
	    doc/libstdc++/libstdc++-manual.pdf
	  
Generates man pages, and installs it in the following directory:
	    man/man3/
	  
	    The generated man pages are namespace-qualified, so to look at
	    the man page for vector, one would use
	    man std::vector.
	  
Generates documentation in the ebook/portable electronic reader format called Epub, and installs it as the following file.
	    doc/libstdc++/libstdc++-manual.epub
	  
Generates single-file XML documentation, and installs it as the following files:
	    doc/libstdc++/libstdc++-api-single.xml
	  
	    doc/libstdc++/libstdc++-manual-single.xml
	  
Makefile rules for several other formats are explicitly not supported, and are always aliased to dummy rules. These unsupported formats are: info, ps, and dvi.
Table B.1. Doxygen Prerequisites
| Tool | Version | Required By | 
|---|---|---|
| coreutils | 8.5 | all | 
| bash | 4.1 | all | 
| doxygen | 1.7.0 | all | 
| graphviz | 2.26 | graphical hierarchies | 
| pdflatex | 2007-59 | pdf output | 
Prerequisite tools are Bash 2.0 or later, Doxygen, and the GNU coreutils. (GNU versions of find, xargs, and possibly sed and grep are used, just because the GNU versions make things very easy.)
To generate the pretty pictures and hierarchy graphs, the Graphviz package will need to be installed. For PDF output, pdflatex is required.
The following Makefile rules run Doxygen to generate HTML docs, XML docs, XML docs as a single file, PDF docs, and the man pages. These rules are not conditional! If the required tools are not found, or are the wrong versions, the rule may end in an error.
make doc-html-doxygen
make doc-xml-doxygen
make doc-xml-single-doxygen
make doc-pdf-doxygen
make doc-man-doxygen
	Generated files are output into separate sub directories of
	doc/doxygen/ in the
	build directory, based on the output format. For instance, the
	HTML docs will be in doc/doxygen/html.
      
	Careful observers will see that the Makefile rules simply call
	a script from the source tree, run_doxygen, which
	does the actual work of running Doxygen and then (most
	importantly) massaging the output files. If for some reason
	you prefer to not go through the Makefile, you can call this
	script directly. (Start by passing --help.)
      
	If you wish to tweak the Doxygen settings, do so by editing
	doc/doxygen/user.cfg.in. Notes to fellow
	library hackers are written in triple-# comments.
      
In general, libstdc++ files should be formatted according to the rules found in the Coding Standard. Before any doxygen-specific formatting tweaks are made, please try to make sure that the initial formatting is sound.
Adding Doxygen markup to a file (informally called “doxygenating”) is very simple. The Doxygen manual can be found here. We try to use a very-recent version of Doxygen.
	For classes, use
	deque/vector/list
	and std::pair as examples.  For
	functions, see their member functions, and the free functions
	in stl_algobase.h. Member functions of
	other container-like types should read similarly to these
	member functions.
      
Some commentary to accompany the first list in the Special Documentation Blocks section of the Doxygen manual:
For longer comments, use the Javadoc style...
...not the Qt style. The intermediate *'s are preferred.
Use the triple-slash style only for one-line comments (the “brief” mode).
This is disgusting. Don't do this.
Some specific guidelines:
Use the @-style of commands, not the !-style. Please be careful about whitespace in your markup comments. Most of the time it doesn't matter; doxygen absorbs most whitespace, and both HTML and *roff are agnostic about whitespace. However, in <pre> blocks and @code/@endcode sections, spacing can have “interesting” effects.
	Use either kind of grouping, as
	appropriate. doxygroups.cc exists for this
	purpose. See stl_iterator.h for a good example
	of the “other” kind of grouping.
      
Please use markup tags like @p and @a when referring to things such as the names of function parameters. Use @e for emphasis when necessary. Use @c to refer to other standard names. (Examples of all these abound in the present code.)
	Complicated math functions should use the multi-line
	format. An example from random.h:
      
/**
 * @brief A model of a linear congruential random number generator.
 *
 * @f[
 *     x_{i+1}\leftarrow(ax_{i} + c) \bmod m
 * @f]
 */
	One area of note is the markup required for
	@file markup in header files. Two details
	are important: for filenames that have the same name in
	multiple directories, include part of the installed path to
	disambiguate. For example:
      
/** @file debug/vector
 *  This file is a GNU debug extension to the Standard C++ Library.
 */
	The other relevant detail for header files is the use of a
	libstdc++-specific doxygen alias that helps distinguish
	between public header files (like random)
	from implementation or private header files (like
	bits/c++config.h.) This alias is spelled
	@headername and can take one or two
	arguments that detail the public header file or files that
	should be included to use the contents of the file. All header
	files that are not intended for direct inclusion must use
	headername in the file
	block. An example:
      
/** @file bits/basic_string.h
 *  This is an internal header file, included by other library headers.
 *  Do not attempt to use it directly. @headername{string}
 */
Be careful about using certain, special characters when writing Doxygen comments. Single and double quotes, and separators in filenames are two common trouble spots. When in doubt, consult the following table.
Table B.2. HTML to Doxygen Markup Comparison
| HTML | Doxygen | 
|---|---|
| \ | \\ | 
| " | \" | 
| ' | \' | 
| <i> | @a word | 
| <b> | @b word | 
| <code> | @c word | 
| <em> | @a word | 
| <em> | <em>two words or more</em> | 
Table B.3. Docbook Prerequisites
| Tool | Version | Required By | 
|---|---|---|
| docbook5-style-xsl | 1.76.1 | all | 
| xsltproc | 1.1.26 | all | 
| xmllint | 2.7.7 | validation | 
| dblatex | 0.3 | pdf output | 
| pdflatex | 2007-59 | pdf output | 
| docbook2X | 0.8.8 | info output | 
Editing the DocBook sources requires an XML editor. Many exist: some notable options include emacs, Kate, or Conglomerate.
Some editors support special “XML Validation” modes that can validate the file as it is produced. Recommended is the nXML Mode for emacs.
Besides an editor, additional DocBook files and XML tools are also required.
	Access to the DocBook 5.0 stylesheets and schema is required. The
	stylesheets are usually packaged by vendor, in something
	like docbook5-style-xsl. To exactly match
	generated output, please use a version of the stylesheets
	equivalent
	to docbook5-style-xsl-1.75.2-3. The
	installation directory for this package corresponds to
	the XSL_STYLE_DIR
	in doc/Makefile.am and defaults
	to /usr/share/sgml/docbook/xsl-ns-stylesheets.
      
	For processing XML, an XML processor and some style
	sheets are necessary. Defaults are xsltproc
	provided by libxslt.
      
	For validating the XML document, you'll need
	something like xmllint and access to the
	relevant DocBook schema. These are provided
	by a vendor package like libxml2 and docbook5-schemas-5.0-4
      
	For PDF output, something that transforms valid Docbook XML to PDF is
	required. Possible solutions include dblatex,
	xmlto, or prince. Of
	these, dblatex is the default. Other
	options are listed on the DocBook web pages. Please
	consult the <libstdc++@gcc.gnu.org> list when
	preparing printed manuals for current best practice and
	suggestions.
      
For Texinfo output, something that transforms valid Docbook XML to Texinfo is required. The default choice is docbook2X.
The following Makefile rules generate (in order): an HTML version of all the DocBook documentation, a PDF version of the same, and a single XML document. These rules are not conditional! If the required tools are not found, or are the wrong versions, the rule may end in an error.
make doc-html-docbook
make doc-pdf-docbook
make doc-xml-single-docbook
	Generated files are output into separate sub directores of
	doc/docbook/ in the
	build directory, based on the output format. For instance, the
	HTML docs will be in doc/docbook/html.
      
	If the Docbook stylesheets are installed in a custom location,
	one can use the variable XSL_STYLE_DIR to
	over-ride the Makefile defaults. As so:
      
	
make XSL_STYLE_DIR="/usr/share/xml/docbook/stylesheet/nwalsh" doc-html-docbook
	
      After editing the xml sources, please make sure that the XML documentation and markup is still valid. This can be done easily, with the following validation rule:
	make doc-xml-validate-docbook
      This is equivalent to doing:
	
	  xmllint --noout --valid xml/index.xml
	
      
	Please note that individual sections and chapters of the
	manual can be validated by substituting the file desired for
	xml/index.xml in the command
	above. Reducing scope in this manner can be helpful when
	validation on the entire manual fails.
      
All Docbook xml sources should always validate. No excuses!
      Which files are important
      All Docbook files are in the directory
      libstdc++-v3/doc/xml
      Inside this directory, the files of importance:
      spine.xml	 	- index to documentation set
      manual/spine.xml  - index to manual
      manual/*.xml  	- individual chapters and sections of the manual
      faq.xml  		- index to FAQ
      api.xml  		- index to source level / API
      All *.txml files are template xml files, i.e., otherwise empty files with
      the correct structure, suitable for filling in with new information.
      Canonical Writing Style
      class template
      function template
      member function template
      (via C++ Templates, Vandevoorde)
      class in namespace std: allocator, not std::allocator
      header file: iostream, not <iostream>
      General structure
      <set>
      <book>
      </book>
      <book>
      <chapter>
      </chapter>
      </book>
      <book>
      <part>
      <chapter>
      <section>
      </section>
      <sect1>
      </sect1>
      <sect1>
      <sect2>
      </sect2>
      </sect1>
      </chapter>
      <chapter>
      </chapter>
      </part>
      </book>
      </set>
    
Complete details on Docbook markup can be found in the DocBook Element Reference, online. An incomplete reference for HTML to Docbook conversion is detailed in the table below.
Table B.4. HTML to Docbook XML Markup Comparison
| HTML | Docbook | 
|---|---|
| <p> | <para> | 
| <pre> | <computeroutput>, <programlisting>, <literallayout> | 
| <ul> | <itemizedlist> | 
| <ol> | <orderedlist> | 
| <il> | <listitem> | 
| <dl> | <variablelist> | 
| <dt> | <term> | 
| <dd> | <listitem> | 
| <a href=""> | <ulink url=""> | 
| <code> | <literal>, <programlisting> | 
| <strong> | <emphasis> | 
| <em> | <emphasis> | 
| " | <quote> | 
And examples of detailed markup for which there are no real HTML equivalents are listed in the table below.
Table B.5. Docbook XML Element Use
| Element | Use | 
|---|---|
| <structname> | <structname>char_traits</structname> | 
| <classname> | <classname>string</classname> | 
| <function> | <function>clear()</function> <function>fs.clear()</function> | 
| <type> | <type>long long</type> | 
| <varname> | <varname>fs</varname> | 
| <literal> | <literal>-Weffc++</literal> <literal>rel_ops</literal> | 
| <constant> | <constant>_GNU_SOURCE</constant> <constant>3.0</constant> | 
| <command> | <command>g++</command> | 
| <errortext> | <errortext>In instantiation of</errortext> | 
| <filename> | <filename class="headerfile">ctype.h</filename> <filename class="directory">/home/gcc/build</filename> <filename class="libraryfile">libstdc++.so</filename> |