Diviner User Guide

Phorge Administrator and User Documentation (Application User Guides)

Using Diviner, a documentation generator.

Overview

Diviner is an application for creating technical documentation.

This article is maintained in a text file in the Phorge repository and generated into the display document you are currently reading using Diviner.

Beyond generating articles, Diviner can also analyze source code and generate documentation about classes, methods, and other primitives.

Generating Documentation

To generate documentation, run:

phorge/ $ ./bin/diviner generate --book <book>

Diviner ".book" Files

Diviner documentation books are configured using JSON .book files, which look like this:

{
  "name" : "example",
  "title" : "Example Documentation",
  "short" : "Example Docs",
  "root" : ".",
  "uri.source" : "http://example.com/diffusion/X/browse/master/%f$%l",
  "rules" : {
    "(\\.diviner$)" : "DivinerArticleAtomizer"
  },
  "exclude" : [
    "(^externals/)",
    "(^scripts/)",
    "(^support/)"
  ],
  "groups" : {
    "forward" : {
      "name" : "Doing Stuff"
    },
    "reverse" : {
      "name" : "Undoing Stuff"
    }
  }
}

The properties in this file are:

• name: Required. Short, unique name to identify the documentation book. This will be used in URIs, so it should not have special characters. Good names are things like "example" or "libcabin".
• root: Required. The root directory (relative to the .book file) which documentation should be generated from. Often this will be a value like "../../", to specify the project root (for example, if the .book file is in project/src/docs/example.book, the value "../../" would generate documentation from the project/ directory.
• title: Optional. Full human-readable title of the documentation book. This is used when there's plenty of display space and should completely describe the book. Good titles are things like "Example Documentation", or "libcabin Developer Documentation".
• short: Optional. Shorter version of the title for use when display space is limited (for example, in navigation breadcrumbs). If omitted, the full title is used. Good short titles are things like "Example Docs" or "libcabin Dev Docs".
• uri.source: Optional. Diviner can link from the documentation to a repository browser so that you can quickly jump to the definition of a class or function. To do this, it uses a URI pattern which you specify here. Normally, this URI should point at a repository browser like Diffusion. For example, "http://repobrowser.yourcompany.com/%f#%l". You can use these conversions in the URI, which will be replaced at runtime:
  • %f: Replaced with the name of the file.
  • %l: Replaced with the line number.
  • %%: Replaced with a literal % symbol.
• rules: Optional. A map of regular expressions to Atomizer classes which controls which documentation generator runs on each file. If omitted, Diviner will use its default ruleset. For example, adding the key "(\\.diviner$)" to the map with value "DivinerArticleAtomizer" tells Diviner to analyze any file with a name ending in .diviner using the "article" atomizer.
• exclude: Optional. A list of regular expressions matching paths which will be excluded from documentation generation for this book. For example, adding a pattern like "(^externals/)" or "(^vendor/)" will make Diviner ignore those directories.
• groups: Optional. Describes top level organizational groups which atoms should be placed into.