A documentation generator is a programming tool that generates software documentation intended for programmers (API documentation) or end users (end-user guide), or both, from a set of source code files, and in some cases, binary files. Some generators, such as Javadoc, can use special comments to drive the generation. Doxygen is an example of a generator that can use all of these methods.

Types of generation

Document generation can be divided in several types:

• Batch generation (generic technique)
• Text block correspondence (documents created based on pre-defined text blocks)
• Forms (forms for websites)
• Documentation synthesis:
  • Documentation can be inferred from code
  • Documentation can be inferred from execution traces^[1]

Some integrated development environments provide interactive access to documentation, code metadata, etc.