Marian NMT code documentation and library API

This directory contains code documentation and library API for developers of Marian NMT.

The documentation is generated using Sphinx + Breathe + Doxygen + Exhale. The documentation source code is written in .rst or .md files with special directives that allow to reference to C++ source code and documentation. The source documents are then build into static HTML pages.

Installation

On Ubuntu 20.04, install the following packages:

sudo apt-get install python3 python3-pip python3-setuptools doxygen

Then set up a Python environment and install modules:

pip3 install virtualenv
virtualenv venv -p python3
source venv/bin/activate
pip3 install -r requirements.txt

Documentation building should also work on Windows, but it has not been tested.

Generation

The documentation can be generated by running:

make html

The website will be generated into build/html and accessible by opening index.html in your browser.

Directories:

• build - automatically output directory for HTML documentation
• doxygen - automatically generated Doxygen XML files
• api - automatic library API generated with Exhale
• .rst and .md files in this directory and its subdirectories are documentation source files
• _static - custom CSS and JavaScript files

Writing documentation

See this section in the documentation for detailed recommendations on how to write code and user documentation in Marian.

In a nutshell, each class, struct or function should have a Doxygen comment following the basic template of:

/**
 * Brief summary.
 * Detailed description. More detail.
 * @see Some reference
 * @param <name> Parameter description
 * @return Return value description
 */
 std::string function(int param);

And attributes should be documented with an inline comment, for example:

int var; ///< Brief description