XML Documentation (Visual C++)
The new home for Visual Studio documentation is Visual Studio 2017 Documentation on docs.microsoft.com.
The latest version of this topic can be found at XML Documentation (Visual C++).
In Visual C++, you can add comments to your source code that will be processed to an .xml file. This file can then be the input to a process that creates documentation for the classes in your code.
In a Visual C++ code file, XML documentation comments must be located directly prior to a method or type definition. The comments can be used to populate the Intellisense QuickInfo data tip in the following scenarios:
when the code is compiled as a Windows Runtime component with an accompanying .winmd file
when the source code is included in the current project
in a library whose type declarations and implementations are located in the same header file
Note
In the current release, code comments are not processed on templates or anything containing a template type (for example, a function taking a parameter as a template). Adding such comments will result in undefined behavior.
For details on creating an .xml file with documentation comments, see the following topics.
| For information about | See |
|---|---|
| The compiler options to use | /doc |
| Tags you can use to provide commonly used functionality in documentation | Recommended Tags for Documentation Comments |
| The ID strings that the compiler produces to identify the constructs in your code | Processing the .xml File |
| How to delimit documentation tags | Delimiters for Visual C++ Documentation Tags |
| Generating an .xml file from one or more .xdc files. | XDCMake Reference |
| Links to information about XML as it relates to Visual Studio feature areas | XML in Visual Studio |
If you need to put XML special characters in the text of a documentation comment, you must use XML entities or a CDATA section.