Hawkmoth - Sphinx Autodoc for C

Hawkmoth is a minimalistic Sphinx C and C++ Domain autodoc directive extension to incorporate formatted C and C++ source code comments written in reStructuredText_ into Sphinx based documentation. It uses Clang Python Bindings for parsing, and generates C and C++ Domain directives for C and C++ API documentation, and more. In short, Hawkmoth is Sphinx Autodoc for C/C++.

Hawkmoth aims to be a compelling alternative for documenting C and C++ projects using Sphinx, mainly through its simplicity of design, implementation and use.

.. _Sphinx: http://www.sphinx-doc.org

.. _C and C++ Domain: http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/stable/domains.html

.. _reStructuredText: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html

Example

Given C source code with rather familiar looking documentation comments::

/**

Get foo out of bar.
:param bar: Name of the bar. / void foobar(const char bar);

and a directive in the Sphinx project::

.. c:autofunction:: foobar :file: filename.c

you can incorporate code documentation into Sphinx. It's as simple as that.

You can document functions, their parameters and return values, structs, classes, unions, their members, macros, function-like macros, enums, enumeration constants, typedefs, variables, as well as have generic documentation comments not attached to any symbols.

See the documentation examples_ section for more, with sample output.

.. _examples: https://jnikula.github.io/hawkmoth/stable/examples.html

Documentation

Documentation on how to install, configure and use Hawkmoth, as well as write documentation comments, with examples, is available for both the latest release and the version currently in development.

The same is also hosted at Read the Docs_.

.. _latest release: https://jnikula.github.io/hawkmoth/stable/

.. _version currently in development: https://jnikula.github.io/hawkmoth/dev/

.. _Read the Docs: https://hawkmoth.readthedocs.io/

Installation

You can install Hawkmoth from PyPI_ with::

pip install hawkmoth

You'll additionally need to install Clang and Python 3 bindings for it through your distro's package manager; they are not available via PyPI. For further details, see the documentation.

Alternatively, installation packages are available for: