ocamldoc - Man Page

The OCaml documentation generator

The OCaml documentation generator ocamldoc(1) generates documentation from special comments embedded in source files. The comments used by ocamldoc are of the form (** ... *) and follow the format described in the The OCaml user's manual.

ocamldoc can produce documentation in various formats: HTML, LaTeX, TeXinfo, Unix man pages, and dot(1) dependency graphs. Moreover, users can add their own custom generators.

In this manpage, we use the word element to refer to any of the following parts of an OCaml source file: a type declaration, a value, a module, an exception, a module type, a type constructor, a record field, a class, a class type, a class method, a class value or a class inheritance clause.

Options

The following command-line options determine the format for the generated documentation generated by ocamldoc(1).

Options for choosing the output format

-html: Generate documentation in HTML default format. The generated HTML pages are stored in the current directory, or in the directory specified with the -d option. You can customize the style of the generated pages by editing the generated style.css file, or by providing your own style sheet using option -css-style. The file style.css is not generated if it already exists.
-latex: Generate documentation in LaTeX default format. The generated LaTeX document is saved in file ocamldoc.out, or in the file specified with the -o option. The document uses the style file ocamldoc.sty. This file is generated when using the -latex option, if it does not already exist. You can change this file to customize the style of your LaTeX documentation.
-texi: Generate documentation in TeXinfo default format. The generated LaTeX document is saved in file ocamldoc.out, or in the file specified with the -o option.
-man: Generate documentation as a set of Unix man pages. The generated pages are stored in the current directory, or in the directory specified with the -d option.
-dot: Generate a dependency graph for the toplevel modules, in a format suitable for displaying and processing by dot(1). The dot(1) tool is available from https://graphviz.org/. The textual representation of the graph is written to the file ocamldoc.out, or to the file specified with the -o option. Use dot ocamldoc.out to display it.
-g file: Dynamically load the given file (which extension usually is .cmo or .cma), which defines a custom documentation generator. If the given file is a simple one and does not exist in the current directory, then ocamldoc looks for it in the custom generators default directory, and in the directories specified with the -i option.
-customdir: Display the custom generators default directory.
-i directory: Add the given directory to the path where to look for custom generators.

General options

-d dir

Generate files in directory dir, rather than the current directory.

-dump file

Dump collected information into file. This information can be read with the -load option in a subsequent invocation of ocamldoc(1).

-hide modules

Hide the given complete module names in the generated documentation. modules is a list of complete module names are separated by commas (,), without blanks. For instance: Stdlib,M2.M3.

-inv-merge-ml-mli

Reverse the precedence of implementations and interfaces when merging. All elements in implementation files are kept, and the -m option indicates which parts of the comments in interface files are merged with the comments in implementation files.

-keep-code

Always keep the source code for values, methods and instance variables, when available. The source code is always kept when a .ml file is given, but is by default discarded when a .mli is given. This option allows the source code to be always kept.

-load file

Load information from file, which has been produced by ocamldoc -dump. Several -load options can be given.

-m flags

Specify merge options between interfaces and implementations. flags can be one or several of the following characters:

d merge description

a merge @author

v merge @version

l merge @see

s merge @since

o merge @deprecated

p merge @param

e merge @raise

r merge @return

A merge everything

-no-custom-tags

Do not allow custom @-tags.

-no-stop

Keep elements placed after the (**/**) special comment.

-o file

Output the generated documentation to file instead of ocamldoc.out. This option is meaningful only in conjunction with the -latex, -texi, or -dot options.

-open module

Opens module before typing.

-pp command

Pipe sources through preprocessor command.

-ppx command

Pipe abstract syntax tree through preprocessor command.

-show-missed-crossref

Show missed cross-reference opportunities.

-sort

Sort the list of top-level modules before generating the documentation.

-stars

Remove blank characters until the first asterisk ('*') in each line of comments.

-t title

Use title as the title for the generated documentation.

-text file

Consider file as a .txt file.

-intro file

Use content of file as ocamldoc text to use as introduction (HTML, LaTeX and TeXinfo only). For HTML, the file is used to create the whole "index.html" file.

-v

Verbose mode. Display progress information.

-version

Print version string and exit.

-vnum

Print short version number and exit.

-warn-error

Treat ocamldoc warnings as errors.

-hide-warnings

Do not print ocamldoc warnings.

-help or --help

Display a short usage summary and exit.

Type-checking options

ocamldoc(1) calls the OCaml type-checker to obtain type information. The following options impact the type-checking phase. They have the same meaning as for the ocamlc(1) and ocamlopt(1) commands.

-I directory: Add directory to the list of directories search for compiled interface files (.cmi files).
-nolabels: Ignore non-optional labels in types.
-rectypes: Allow arbitrary recursive types. (See the -rectypes option to ocamlc(1).)

Options for generating HTML pages

The following options apply in conjunction with the -html option:

-all-params: Display the complete list of parameters for functions and methods.
-charset s: Add information about character encoding being s (default is iso-8859-1).
-css-style filename: Use filename as the Cascading Style Sheet file.
-colorize-code: Colorize the OCaml code enclosed in [ ] and \{[ ]\}, using colors to emphasize keywords, etc. If the code fragments are not syntactically correct, no color is added.
-index-only: Generate only index files.
-short-functors: Use a short form to display functors: module M : functor (A:Module) -> functor (B:Module2) -> sig .. end is displayed as module M (A:Module) (B:Module2) : sig .. end.

Options for generating LaTeX files

The following options apply in conjunction with the -latex option:

-latex-value-prefix prefix

Give a prefix to use for the labels of the values in the generated LaTeX document. The default prefix is the empty string. You can also use the options -latex-type-prefix, -latex-exception-prefix, -latex-module-prefix, -latex-module-type-prefix, -latex-class-prefix, -latex-class-type-prefix, -latex-attribute-prefix, and -latex-method-prefix.

These options are useful when you have, for example, a type and a value with the same name. If you do not specify prefixes, LaTeX will complain about multiply defined labels.

-latextitle n,style

Associate style number n to the given LaTeX sectioning command style, e.g. sectionorsubsection. (LaTeX only.) This is useful when including the generated document in another LaTeX document, at a given sectioning level. The default association is 1 for section, 2 for subsection, 3 for subsubsection, 4 for paragraph and 5 for subparagraph.

-noheader

Suppress header in generated documentation.

-notoc

Do not generate a table of contents.

-notrailer

Suppress trailer in generated documentation.

-sepfiles

Generate one .tex file per toplevel module, instead of the global ocamldoc.out file.

Options for generating TeXinfo files

The following options apply in conjunction with the -texi option:

-esc8: Escape accented characters in Info files.
-info-entry: Specify Info directory entry.
-info-section: Specify section of Info directory.
-noheader: Suppress header in generated documentation.
-noindex: Do not build index for Info files.
-notrailer: Suppress trailer in generated documentation.

Options for generating dot graphs

The following options apply in conjunction with the -dot option:

-dot-colors colors: Specify the colors to use in the generated dot code. When generating module dependencies, ocamldoc(1) uses different colors for modules, depending on the directories in which they reside. When generating types dependencies, ocamldoc(1) uses different colors for types, depending on the modules in which they are defined. colors is a list of color names separated by commas (,), as in Red,Blue,Green. The available colors are the ones supported by the dot(1) tool.
-dot-include-all: Include all modules in the dot(1) output, not only modules given on the command line or loaded with the -load option.
-dot-reduce: Perform a transitive reduction of the dependency graph before outputting the dot code. This can be useful if there are a lot of transitive dependencies that clutter the graph.
-dot-types: Output dot code describing the type dependency graph instead of the module dependency graph.

Options for generating man files

The following options apply in conjunction with the -man option:

-man-mini: Generate man pages only for modules, module types, classes and class types, instead of pages for all elements.
-man-suffix suffix: Set the suffix used for generated man filenames. Default is o, as in List.o.
-man-section section: Set the section number used for generated man filenames. Default is 3.

Referenced By

nbdkit-release-notes-1.24(1).