Packaging reference documentation with jar file
- by soren.enemaerke
We are porting our .NET library to a java equivalent and is now looking at how to distribute this port. Packaging the classes into a jar-file seems like best practice and we would then ship this jar file in a zip along with some license terms.
But what about the documentation? In .NET land it seems like best practice to distribute the xml file that can be consumed by tooling (Visual Studio) but we can't seem to find such best practices for java. We have javadoc comments on our public classes and interfaces, so we are just looking for a way to generate and distribute these comments in a way that is developer friendly (we're thinking easily consumed from various IDEs). What are developers expecting and how do you best deliver this?
We would really prefer to bundle the documentation along with the jar file and not have to host the documentation on our website
EDIT: We would like for our documentation to appear inside the java IDEs so we want to provide the documentation in a way that integrates into the IDEs as gracefully as possible. In .NET land this is as an xml file placed next to the .dll file, but is there a similar concept for jar files that enables the integration into tooling?
PS: We are developing in Eclipse and have an ant task doing the building and jar-file packaing in our automated build.
