summaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/doc/trouble.doc
blob: 47ef623dd2a5efd5fb714030e07999e1744fcb23 (plain)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
/******************************************************************************
 *
 * 
 *
 * Copyright (C) 1997-2015 by Dimitri van Heesch.
 *
 * Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its
 * documentation under the terms of the GNU General Public License is hereby 
 * granted. No representations are made about the suitability of this software 
 * for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.
 * See the GNU General Public License for more details.
 *
 * Documents produced by Doxygen are derivative works derived from the
 * input used in their production; they are not affected by this license.
 *
 */
/*! \page trouble Troubleshooting

\section knowproblems Known Problems
<ul>
<li>Doxygen is <em>not</em> a real compiler, it is only a lexical scanner.
    This means that it can and will not detect errors in your source code.
<li>Doxygen has a build in preprocessor, but this works slightly different than
    the C preprocessor. Doxygen assumes a header file is properly guarded against
    multiple inclusion, and that each include file is standalone (i.e. it could be placed
    at the top of a source file without causing compiler errors). As long as this is
    true (and this is a good design practice) you should not encounter problems.
<li>Since it is impossible to test all possible code fragments, it is
    very well possible, that some valid piece of C/C++ code is not handled
    properly. If you find such a piece, please send it to me, so I can
    improve doxygen's parsing capabilities. Try to make the piece of code 
    you send as small as possible, to help me narrow down the search.
<li>Doxygen does not work properly if there are multiple classes, structs
    or unions with the same name in your code. It should not crash however,
    rather it should ignore all of the classes with the same name except one.
<li>Some commands do not work inside the arguments of other commands.
    Inside a HTML link (i.e. \<a&nbsp;href="..."\>...\<a\>) for instance 
    other commands (including other HTML commands) do not work!
    The sectioning commands are an important exception. 
<li>Redundant braces can confuse doxygen in some cases. 
    For example:
\verbatim
  void f (int);
\endverbatim
    is properly parsed as a function declaration, but
\verbatim
  const int (a);
\endverbatim
  is also seen as a function declaration with name 
  <code>int</code>, because only the syntax is analyzed,
  not the semantics. If the redundant braces can be detected, as in
\verbatim
  int *(a[20]);
\endverbatim
  then doxygen will remove the braces and correctly parse the result.
<li>Not all names in code fragments that are included in the documentation
    are replaced by links (for instance when using \ref cfg_source_browser "SOURCE_BROWSER" = `YES`)
    and links to overloaded members may point to the wrong member.
    This also holds for the "Referenced by" list that is generated for
    each function.

    For a part this is because the code parser isn't smart enough at the
    moment. I'll try to improve this in the future. But even with these
    improvements not everything can be properly linked to the corresponding
    documentation, because of possible ambiguities or lack of
    information about the context in which the code fragment is found.  
<li>It is not possible to insert a non-member function f in a class A 
    using the \ref cmdrelates "\\relates" or \ref cmdrelatesalso "\\relatesalso" 
    command, if class A already
    has a member with name f and the same argument list.
<li>There is only very limited support for member specialization at the
    moment. It only works if there is a specialized template class as
    well.
<li>Not all special commands are properly translated to RTF.
<li>Version 1.8.6 of dot (and maybe earlier versions too) do not 
    generate proper map files, causing the graphs that doxygen generates
    not to be properly clickable.
<li>PHP only: Doxygen requires that all PHP statements (i.e. code) is 
    wrapped in a functions/methods, otherwise you may run into parse problems.
</ul>


\section howtohelp How to Help
The development of Doxygen highly depends on your input! 

If you are trying Doxygen let me know what you think of it (do you
miss certain features?). Even if you decide not to use it, please let me
know why. 

\section bug_reports How to report a bug

Bugs are tracked in GNOME's <a href="http://bugzilla.gnome.org">bugzilla</a> database.
Before submitting a 
<a href="http://bugzilla.gnome.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=doxygen">new bug</a>,
first <a href="http://bugzilla.gnome.org/query.cgi?format=advanced&product=doxygen">search</a>
through the database if the same bug has already been submitted by others (the doxygen
product will be preselected).
If you believe you have found a new bug, 
please <a href="http://bugzilla.gnome.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=doxygen">report it</a>.

If you are unsure whether or not something is a bug, please ask help
on the <a href="http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=5971">users mailing list</a> 
first (subscription is required).

If you send only a (vague) description of a bug, you are usually not very 
helpful and it will cost me much more time to figure out what you mean. 
In the worst-case your bug report may even be completely ignored by me, so
always try to include the following information in your bug report: 
- The version of doxygen you are using (for instance 1.5.3, use 
  `doxygen --version` if you are not sure).
- The name and version number of your operating system (for instance 
  SuSE Linux 6.4)
- It is usually a good idea to send along the configuration file as well, 
  but please use doxygen with the <code>-s</code> flag while generating it
  to keep it small (use <code>doxygen -s -u [configName]</code> to strip
  the comments from an existing config file). 
- The easiest (and often the only) way for me to fix bugs is if you can 
  attach a small example demonstrating the problem you have to the bug report, so I can
  reproduce it on my machine. Please make sure the example is valid
  source code (could potentially compile) and that the problem is really 
  captured by the example (I often get examples that do not trigger the 
  actual bug!). If you intend to send more than one file please zip or tar
  the files together into a single file for easier processing.
  Note that when reporting a new bug you'll get a chance to attach a file to it 
  only \e after submitting the initial bug description.

You can (and are encouraged to) add a patch for a bug. If you do so
please use PATCH as a keyword in the bug entry form.

If you have ideas how to fix existing bugs and limitations please discuss them on 
the <a href="http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=5971">developers mailing list</a> 
(subscription required). Patches can also be sent directly to dimitri@stack.nl if 
you prefer not to send them via the bug tracker or mailing list.

For patches please use
"diff -uN" or include the files you modified. If you send more than
one file please tar or zip everything, so I only have to save and download
one file.

\htmlonly
Go to the <a href="features.html">next</a> section or return to the
 <a href="index.html">index</a>.
\endhtmlonly


*/