Is there a tool that can just extract my XML comments in a code base and put them in an XML file? I don’t want to maintain a seperate file myself, I want to generate the XML when I am done and remove the content from the source code.
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Is there a tool that can just extract my XML comments in a code base and put them in an XML file? I don’t want to maintain a seperate file myself, I want to generate the XML when I am done and remove the content from the source code.
The problem with the approach you are asking for is that as soon as you change the code, your “precompiled xml” will drift out of sync with it (or if you want to stop this hapening, you will have to edit the xml file by hand, which will be a thousand times worse than seeing the original XML comments!). I think you really ought to consider embracing the doc comments and making the most of the many benefits (direct and indirect) that come from using them. But if you want to do it, you only have to enable generation of the XML doc output, rebuild the project, then copy out the XML files from your bin\debug or bin\release folder, and start slashing and burning.
There are other, less destructive options, however:
You can change the syntax colouring colours for documentation comments in Tools > Options : Environment > Fonts and Colors. Use a faint colour and the comments will fade into the background.
Perhaps if the comments were tidier, they wouldn’t make your eyes bleed. I’ve written an addin (Atomineer Pro Documentation) that can apply a comprehensive range of formatting options to doc comments to make them more pleasant to look at: optional separators above/below comments, optional whitespace in and around entries, optional columnar alignment of the text blocks, optional word-wrapping, etc. Or if the XML tags are what really hurt, it can convert your comments to a less jarring format (it supports Doxygen, JavaDoc and Qt as well as XML documentation).
My addin also has an option that can use the “outlining” facility in VS to hide doc comments (on demand or whenever a document is opened). It might alleviate some of your symptoms by essentially hiding the doc comments.
Theoretically it’s possible to write a VS2010 extension that can change the display of doc comments to remove the markup and show a more wysiwyg representation. I haven’t heard of anything but there may be something out there now that will help you.