Sometimes, when I look through my header files I’d like to add something little to the (doxygen) documentation. That might be a quick note about the use of some function parameter, or just fixing a little typo.
But then I think: Oh no, that’ll trigger a recompile on the next make call! And for certain basic headers the whole project would recompile, which can take a long time. So, nevermind!
Is there a solution to this dilemma? Are there approaches where the functions/classes are documented not directly in the headers? Or are there (plans for) a smart make that would notice that only some comment has changed, but no recompilation is necessary?
How about checking out (you do version control, don’t you?) another copy of the codebase in a different directory, just for these kinds of edits?
It can be a separate branch, or not. Then, when these kinds of small changes occur to you, you just make them here. You can commit them directly: now they are in a safe place, and won’t disturb your actual development. Every once in a while, like once a week if your build times really are that long, you can merge these changes to what you are working on. Merge conflicts should rarely occur, as long as you document in one directory and write code in the other.