Question

I have two classes:

class A {
public:
  /** Brief description
   * Grand description
   */
  virtual void func() {
    // Do something.
  }
};

class B: public A {
  // How to re-describe func() here?
};

I have turned on description inheritance in Doxygen config, and that is fine. But I want to change description in derived class to some functions, implemented in base class, without reimplementing these functions.

Of course, I can do the following:

class B: public A {
public:
  /** My new description.
   * ...
   */
  virtual void func() {
    A::func();
  }
};

But it seems “ugly” to me – to write unnecessery code just to add some comments.

Are there other solutions?

Answer 1

If you really want to you can also use a preprocessor trick:

class B: public A {
  public:

#ifdef ONLY_FOR_DOXYGEN
    /** Beautiful docs */
    virtual void func();
#endif
};

along with these settings:

ENABLE_PREPROCESSING   = YES
MACRO_EXPANSION        = YES
EXPAND_ONLY_PREDEF     = YES
PREDEFINED             = ONLY_FOR_DOXYGEN

That way only doxygen sees the extra code.