I’m working on an application which is constantly refactored to improve it. Now, if we rename a certain class to better capture its intention, all the documentation mentioning the class does not get updated automatically, unless you use links ({@link ClassName}) to refer to the class.
JavaDoc principles however state that one should “Use in-line links economically”, since links stand out and draw the readers attention, which I find sensible. Also you can’t link to parameters of a method.
Is there another way in JavaDoc to make comments more robust to refactoring I’m not aware of?
When using eclipse to do refactoring you can search through string references in things like xml files as well.
Press Shift-Alt-R twice to get the dialog box.
(On Macs it is Option-Command-R twice )