Generating Doxygen documentation locally

Developers can generate the documentation locally to review the results of their changes before committing them to the repository. First build (and optionally install) ROOT, then the process is as follows:

$ cd <root_sources>/documentation/doxygen
$ source <root_install_or_build_location>/bin/thisroot.sh
$ make

By default, the results are located at ${HOME}/rootdoc/html. This process will generate the full documentation, which may take several hours to complete! To minimize the generation time and preview only the changes you’ve made locally, edit the script <root_sources>/documentation/doxygen/makeinput.sh to limit the number of input files being scanned. Typically, you should keep only the folder(s) containing the documentation you are currently working on. To view the results of this local build, open the file {HOME}/rootdoc/html/index.html in your preferred web browser.

Compilation prerequisites on Ubuntu

  • apt install doxygen make jupyter-nbconvert
  • pip install scandir nbformat metakernel ipykernel
  • Optional: apt install qhelpgenerator-qt5. In case of older Ubuntu versions, use qt4-dev-tools instead, and modify in the Doxyfile QHG_LOCATION to /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt4/bin/qhelpgenerator
  • check that doxygen version >= 1.9