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https://github.com/ruby/rdoc

RDoc produces HTML and online documentation for Ruby projects.
https://github.com/ruby/rdoc

Keywords

documentation-tool hacktoberfest ruby

Keywords from Contributors

rubygems activerecord activejob mvc rack json-parser repl rubocop debugger ruby-gem

Last synced: about 14 hours ago
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Repository metadata

RDoc produces HTML and online documentation for Ruby projects.

README.md

RDoc - Ruby Documentation System

Description

RDoc produces HTML and command-line documentation for Ruby projects. RDoc includes the rdoc and ri tools for generating and displaying documentation from the command-line.

Generating Documentation

Once installed, you can create documentation using the rdoc command

rdoc [options] [names...]

For an up-to-date option summary, type

rdoc --help

A typical use might be to generate documentation for a package of Ruby source (such as RDoc itself).

rdoc

This command generates documentation for all the Ruby and C source files in and below the current directory. These will be stored in a documentation tree starting in the subdirectory doc.

You can make this slightly more useful for your readers by having the index page contain the documentation for the primary file. In our case, we could type

rdoc --main README.md

You'll find information on the various formatting tricks you can use in comment blocks in the documentation this generates.

RDoc uses file extensions to determine how to process each file. File names ending .rb and .rbw are assumed to be Ruby source. Files ending .c are parsed as C files. All other files are assumed to contain just Markup-style markup (with or without leading # comment markers). If directory names are passed to RDoc, they are scanned recursively for C and Ruby source files only.

To generate documentation using rake see RDoc::Task.

To generate documentation programmatically:

require 'rdoc/rdoc'

options = RDoc::Options.new
options.files = ['a.rb', 'b.rb']
options.setup_generator 'aliki'
# see RDoc::Options

rdoc = RDoc::RDoc.new
rdoc.document options
# see RDoc::RDoc

You can specify the target files for document generation with .document file in the project root directory. .document file contains a list of file and directory names including comment lines starting with #. See https://github.com/ruby/rdoc/blob/master/.document as an example.

Writing Documentation

To write documentation for RDoc, place a comment above the class, module, method, constant, or attribute you want documented:

##
# This class represents an arbitrary shape by a series of points.
class Shape
  ##
  # Creates a new shape described by a +polyline+.
  #
  # If the +polyline+ does not end at the same point it started at the
  # first pointed is copied and placed at the end of the line.
  #
  # An ArgumentError is raised if the line crosses itself, but shapes may
  # be concave.
  def initialize polyline
    # ...
  end
end

Markup Formats

RDoc supports multiple markup formats:

Format File Extensions Default For
RDoc .rdoc .rb, .c files
Markdown .md None
RD .rd None
TomDoc N/A None

RDoc markup is currently the default format for Ruby and C files. However, we plan to retire it in favor of Markdown in the future.

Markdown support is actively being improved. Once it reaches feature parity with RDoc markup, it will become the default format.

For standalone documentation files, we recommend writing .md files instead of .rdoc files.

RD and TomDoc are legacy formats. We highly discourage their use in new projects.

Specifying Markup Format

Per-file: Add a :markup: directive at the top of a Ruby file:

# :markup: markdown

# This class uses **Markdown** for documentation.
class MyClass
end

Per-project: Create a .rdoc_options file in your project root:

markup: markdown

Command line:

rdoc --markup markdown

Feature Differences

Feature RDoc Markup Markdown
Headings = Heading # Heading
Bold *word* **word**
Italic _word_ *word*
Monospace +word+ `word`
Links {text}[url] [text](url)
Code blocks Indent 2 spaces Fenced with ```
Cross-references Automatic Automatic
Directives (:nodoc:, etc.) Supported Supported
Tables Not supported Supported
Strikethrough <del>text</del> ~~text~~
Footnotes Not supported Supported

For complete syntax documentation, see:

Directives

Comments can contain directives that tell RDoc information that it cannot otherwise discover through parsing. See RDoc::Markup@Directives to control what is or is not documented, to define method arguments or to break up methods in a class by topic. See RDoc::Parser::Ruby for directives used to teach RDoc about metaprogrammed methods.

See RDoc::Parser::C for documenting C extensions with RDoc.

Documentation Coverage

To determine how well your project is documented run rdoc -C lib to get a documentation coverage report. rdoc -C1 lib includes parameter names in the documentation coverage report.

Theme Options

RDoc ships with two built-in themes:

  • Aliki (default) - A modern, clean theme with improved navigation and search
  • Darkfish (deprecated) - The classic theme, will be removed in v8.0

To use the Darkfish theme instead of the default Aliki theme:

rdoc --format darkfish

Or in your .rdoc_options file:

generator_name: darkfish

There are also a few community-maintained themes for RDoc:

Please follow the theme's README for usage instructions.

Live Preview Server

RDoc includes a built-in server for previewing documentation while you edit source files. It parses your code once on startup, then watches for changes and auto-refreshes the browser.

rdoc --server

This starts a server at http://localhost:4000. You can specify a different port:

rdoc --server=8080

Or use the Rake task:

rake rdoc:server

How It Works

  • Parses all source files on startup and serves pages from memory using the Aliki theme
  • A background thread polls file mtimes every second
  • When a file changes, only that file is re-parsed — the browser refreshes automatically
  • New files are detected and added; deleted files are removed

No external dependencies. The server uses Ruby's built-in TCPServer (socket stdlib) — no WEBrick or other gems required.

Limitations

  • Reopened classes and file deletion. If a class is defined across multiple files (e.g. Foo in both a.rb and b.rb), deleting one file removes the entire class from the store, including parts from the other file. Saving the remaining file triggers a re-parse that restores it.
  • Full cache invalidation. Any file change clears all cached pages. This is simple and correct — rendering is fast (~ms per page), parsing is the expensive part and is done incrementally.
  • No HTTPS or HTTP/2. The server is intended for local development preview only.

Bugs

See CONTRIBUTING.md for information on filing a bug report. It's OK to file a bug report for anything you're having a problem with. If you can't figure out how to make RDoc produce the output you like that is probably a documentation bug.

License

RDoc is Copyright (c) 2001-2003 Dave Thomas, The Pragmatic Programmers. Portions (c) 2007-2011 Eric Hodel. Portions copyright others, see individual files and LEGAL.rdoc for details.

RDoc is free software, and may be redistributed under the terms specified in LICENSE.rdoc.

Warranty

This software is provided "as is" and without any express or implied warranties, including, without limitation, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose.

Owner metadata

GitHub Events

Total
Last Year

Committers metadata

Last synced: 1 day ago

Total Commits: 3,570
Total Committers: 140
Avg Commits per committer: 25.5
Development Distribution Score (DDS): 0.533

Commits in past year: 242
Committers in past year: 19
Avg Commits per committer in past year: 12.737
Development Distribution Score (DDS) in past year: 0.57

Name Email Commits
Eric Hodel d****n@s****t 1667
Code Ass a****a@g****m 474
SHIBATA Hiroshi h****t@r****g 256
Nobuyoshi Nakada n****u@r****g 246
Stan Lo s****2@g****m 170
dependabot[bot] 4****] 126
Designing Patterns t****s@d****m 62
Zachary Scott e@z****o 49
tomoya ishida t****n@g****m 46
Zachary Scott z****y@z****t 27
Burdette Lamar B****r@Y****m 26
Tom Copeland t****m@i****m 25
Kouhei Sutou k****u@c****m 19
Yusuke Endoh m****e@r****g 18
Vinicius Stock v****k 15
Kazuhiro NISHIYAMA zn@m****m 15
Phil Hagelberg p****l@h****g 13
Mike Dalessio m****o@g****m 12
Erik Hollensbe e****b@h****g 11
Jeremy Evans c****e@j****t 11
Benoit Daloze e****p@g****m 10
Masafumi Koba 4****s 10
Earlopain 1****n 9
Yusuke Nakamura y****5@g****m 8
Ryan Davis r****y@z****m 8
Petrik p****k@d****t 8
Marcus Stollsteimer s****r@w****e 7
Amauri Bizerra 1****c 7
toshimaru me@t****t 6
zzak z****t@g****m 6
and 110 more...

Committer domains:

Issue and Pull Request metadata

Last synced: about 14 hours ago

Total issues: 130
Total pull requests: 738
Average time to close issues: over 1 year
Average time to close pull requests: about 1 month
Total issue authors: 61
Total pull request authors: 67
Average comments per issue: 1.28
Average comments per pull request: 1.12
Merged pull request: 550
Bot issues: 0
Bot pull requests: 142

Past year issues: 38
Past year pull requests: 185
Past year average time to close issues: 6 days
Past year average time to close pull requests: 9 days
Past year issue authors: 21
Past year pull request authors: 24
Past year average comments per issue: 1.53
Past year average comments per pull request: 1.51
Past year merged pull request: 107
Past year bot issues: 0
Past year bot pull requests: 33

More stats: https://issues.ecosyste.ms/repositories/lookup?url=https://github.com/ruby/rdoc

Top Issue Authors

  • BurdetteLamar (14)
  • st0012 (12)
  • okuramasafumi (7)
  • nobu (7)
  • hsbt (6)
  • Earlopain (5)
  • zenspider (5)
  • tompng (3)
  • halostatue (3)
  • zzak (3)
  • nevans (3)
  • peterzhu2118 (3)
  • gemmaro (3)
  • p8 (2)
  • skatkov (2)

Top Pull Request Authors

  • st0012 (173)
  • dependabot[bot] (142)
  • nobu (70)
  • tompng (47)
  • BurdetteLamar (32)
  • hsbt (25)
  • p8 (20)
  • okuramasafumi (19)
  • flavorjones (15)
  • vinistock (15)
  • zzak (14)
  • ybiquitous (13)
  • nevans (11)
  • sunblaze (11)
  • adam12 (8)

Top Issue Labels

  • bug (16)
  • enhancement (6)
  • Feature Request (5)
  • markup-markdown (4)
  • Bug (2)
  • Non-Bug (1)
  • generator (1)
  • documentation (1)

Top Pull Request Labels

  • dependencies (142)
  • enhancement (79)
  • bug (69)
  • github_actions (48)
  • documentation (36)
  • Documentation (7)
  • Feature Request (6)
  • refactor (2)
  • experimental (2)
  • breaking-change (2)
  • integration_testng (2)
  • Bug (1)
  • javascript (1)
  • Performance (1)

Package metadata

gem.coop: rdoc

RDoc produces HTML and command-line documentation for Ruby projects. RDoc includes the +rdoc+ and +ri+ tools for generating and displaying documentation from the command-line.

rubygems.org: rdoc

RDoc produces HTML and command-line documentation for Ruby projects. RDoc includes the +rdoc+ and +ri+ tools for generating and displaying documentation from the command-line.

proxy.golang.org: github.com/ruby/rdoc

  • Homepage:
  • Documentation: https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/ruby/rdoc#section-documentation
  • Licenses: other
  • Latest release: v7.2.0+incompatible (published 3 months ago)
  • Last Synced: 2026-04-28T04:01:32.437Z (3 days ago)
  • Versions: 70
  • Dependent Packages: 0
  • Dependent Repositories: 0
  • Rankings:
    • Forks count: 1.352%
    • Stargazers count: 2.208%
    • Average: 5.984%
    • Dependent packages count: 9.576%
    • Dependent repos count: 10.802%
guix: ruby-rdoc

HTML and command-line documentation utility

Dependencies

Gemfile rubygems
  • gettext >= 0 development
  • kpeg >= 0 development
  • racc > 1.4.10 development
  • rake >= 0 development
  • rubocop >= 0 development
  • test-unit >= 0 development
rdoc.gemspec rubygems
  • psych >= 4.0.0
.github/workflows/test.yml actions
  • actions/checkout ac593985615ec2ede58e132d2e21d2b1cbd6127c composite
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.github/workflows/gh-pages.yml actions
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  • ruby/setup-ruby 250fcd6a742febb1123a77a841497ccaa8b9e939 composite
.github/workflows/push_gem.yml actions
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  • rubygems/release-gem 1c162a739e8b4cb21a676e97b087e8268d8fc40b composite
  • step-security/harden-runner df199fb7be9f65074067a9eb93f12bb4c5547cf2 composite
package-lock.json npm
  • 124 dependencies
.github/workflows/ruby-core.yml actions
  • actions/checkout 8e8c483db84b4bee98b60c0593521ed34d9990e8 composite
  • ruby/setup-ruby eaecf785f6a34567a6d97f686bbb7bccc1ac1e5c composite
.github/workflows/fork-preview-deploy.yml actions
  • actions/download-artifact v6 composite
  • actions/github-script v8 composite
.github/workflows/cloudflare-preview.yml actions
  • actions/checkout v6.0.1 composite
  • actions/github-script v8 composite
  • cloudflare/wrangler-action v3 composite
  • ruby/setup-ruby v1 composite
.github/workflows/lint.yml actions
  • actions/checkout v6.0.1 composite
  • ruby/setup-ruby master composite
package.json npm
  • stylelint ^16.25.0 development
  • stylelint-config-standard ^39.0.1 development
  • stylelint-value-no-unknown-custom-properties ^6.0.1 development
.github/workflows/pr-preview-check.yml actions
  • actions/github-script v8 composite
  • actions/upload-artifact v5 composite

Score: 34.97851730525226