Introduction
The javadoc builder is a tool very similar to xdoclet. In fact it was started
becase running xdoclet with ant took too long.
The javadoc builder is very close to xdoclet2 and will probably
be compatible with XD2 in a near future.
The XD2 compatibility is totally intentional, since XD in quite popular
and there is an important number of plugins there it should be quite easy to
incorporate velocity based templates from XD2.
How does it work?
The javadoc builder uses the QDox library to parse java files and build data structures
that represent the sourcefiles with their respective comments.
These data structures are passed to the velocity templates to produce the desired output.
The future at a glance
Since I have implemented both modules (template source and engine) as extension points,
the next mayor area of interest is to provide more functionallity out of the box.
I'll focus on providing templates to do
specific tasks. If you are intrested in contributing a template please contact me, I'd
like to have more contributions on that area.
Extensible
The template source extension points allow to place anywhere, and easily add templates from
whatever source required, without any need of touching the plugin source.
The template engine extension point allows to use virtually any template engine to process the context.
The builder abstracts the logic of what to do and where, leaving the template engine the
process of a context only. Having this done was one of the main features for extensibility, since
it does not limit the use of a particular template engine (no matter how good it is).
More built-in funcionallity. A nice tool is a good thing, but a solved problem is a great thing.
I plan to add as much built-in functionallity (read templates that solve problems) as I can.
There are some importante issues in template managment that are to be solved yet, but this
is another pending issue.