GhostDoc Community for VS2017 and Later

Looking for GhostDoc Pro, GhostDoc Enterprise? Visit the product page.

Now with external comments support!

GhostDoc is a Visual Studio extension for developers who need to Generate XML Comments from source code using customizable templates, maintain clean and up-to-date documentation, produce help documentation in multiple formats, use intelligent source code Spell Checker in Visual Studio, and more.

GhostDoc also helps to automate the generation of clean, helpful documentation of your clean code, building it, and packaging it up all without human intervention.

What's New in v2020

• New menu batch action - 'Document Checked Out Files'
• Documentation Maintenance - now allows Solution/Project level analysis for 'Missing Documentation', 'Auto-generated * Documentation', 'Synchronize with member signature'
• Documentation Maintenance - improved responsiveness and performance when running the maintenance analysis on a large number of files or projects
• Visual Editor improvements - <see> and <seealso> authoring support, key combination Ctrl+Enter now saves and close the window
• New Re-Document action in the Visual Editor
• New and improved syntax editor for Rule Template editor and Visual Editor
• Rule Template editor - easier template customization with improved Intellisense, added Quick Info (on mouseover), Completion List (Ctrl+Space), and Parameter Info
• Improved and optimized web help TOC generation in non-frame themes
• (EE) New x64 command-line utility allows producing help documentation for very large solutions
• Now can document local functions

For the details, see [What's New in GhostDoc v2020]https://support.submain.com/kb/a68/whats-new-in-ghostdoc-v2020.aspx?utm_campaign=ghostdoc&utm_medium=listing&utm_source=visualstudiogallery)

Benefits

• Automatically generate a starting point for your help documentation
• Visual editing for your help docs
• Produce help documentation in multiple formats
• Find auto-generated comments - edit or remove the bulk created docs
• Ensure code documentation quality
• Maintain clean and up-to-date code documentation

If you follow good naming conventions in your code, then you will get very decent results on the summary GhostDoc generates. When you see code that is not documented, it is as simple as hit Ctrl-Shift-D to have GhostDoc document it.

GhostDoc Pro and GhostDoc Enterprise

In addition to standard features the free version GhostDoc offers, there are GhostDoc Pro and GhostDoc Enterprise offerings that provide ultimate documentation configuration flexibility and automation of routine documentation operations.

• Generate missing XML comments for entire type/class, file, or project
• Maintain clean and up-to-date code documentation
  • Documentation Quality hints in Visual Studio editor
  • Documentation Maintenance - find, edit or remove auto-generated comments; identify missing and out of sync comments
• Produce help documentation in multiple formats and contemporary themes
• Generate help documentation from your build
• Intelligent source code Spell Checker
• Powerful XML Comment templates and template libraries
• Help Configurations and Help Content Targeting
• StyleCop compliant documentation templates

For GhostDoc Pro and GhostDoc Enterprise, please visit the product page

Easy Visual Editing, not XML escaping

XML Comments are powerful for code documentation. The strict nature of the XML makes it much too easy to break the formatting and miss the required escaping for symbols.

Have you ever generated help documentation from comments, only to find that the end result is poorly formatted? Text running awkwardly onto separate lines, or garbled text caused by an omitted escape character? It's a frustrating, time-consuming experience to regenerate it until it looks right.

To avoid that frustration, GhostDoc allows you to edit documentation in WYSIWYG fashion, with the changes persisted back to the XML documentation in your code.

• Edit inline in the actual help documentation so that you see the end result as you go
• Leave the result in your source code files as XML documentation when you're satisfied
• Never worry about hand-typing escape sequences or remembering how best to format the method or type summary