Swift-DocC is a documentation compiler for Swift frameworks and packages aimed at making it easy to write and publish great developer documentation.
For an example of Swift-DocC in action, check out developer.apple.com. Much of Apple's developer documentation, from Reference documentation to Tutorials, is built using Swift-DocC.
Swift-DocC is being actively developed. For more information about the Swift-DocC project, see the introductory blog post here.
The latest documentation for the Swift-DocC project is available on Swift.org.
The Swift Forums are the best place to get help with Swift-DocC and discuss future plans.
If you're looking to write and publish documentation with Swift-DocC, the best way to get started is with Swift-DocC's user documentation.
Swift-DocC builds documentation by combining Symbol Graph files containing API information
with a .docc
Documentation Catalog containing articles and tutorials
to create a final archive containing the compiled documentation.
More concretely, Swift-DocC understands the following kinds of inputs:
-
Symbol Graph files with the
.symbols.json
extension. Symbol Graph files are a machine-readable representation of a module's APIs, including their documentation comments and relationship with one another. -
A Documentation Catalog with the
.docc
extension. Documentation Catalogs can include additional documentation content like the following:-
Documentation markup files with the
.md
extension. Documentation markup files can be used to extend documentation for symbols and to write free-form articles. -
Tutorial files with the
.tutorial
extension. Tutorial files are used to author step-by-step instructions on how to use a framework. -
Additional documentation assets with known extensions like
.png
,.jpg
,.mov
, and.zip
. -
An
Info.plist
file containing metadata such as the name of the documented module. This file is optional and the information it contains can be passed via the command line.
-
Swift-DocC outputs a machine-readable archive of the compiled documentation. This archive contains render JSON files, which fully describe the contents of a documentation page and can be processed by a renderer such as Swift-DocC-Render.
For more in-depth technical information about Swift-DocC, you can build and preview the project's technical documentation from the command line with
bin/preview-docs
Note: The
preview-docs
script expects theDOCC_HTML_DIR
environment variable to be set with the path to a Swift-DocC renderer. See the Usingdocc
to build and preview documentation section below for details.
Alternatively, you can open the package in Xcode 13 and select the "Build Documentation" button in the Product menu to view the documentation in Xcode's documentation window.
-
As of Swift 5.5, the Swift Compiler is able to emit Symbol Graph files as part of the compilation process.
-
SymbolKit is a Swift package containing the specification and reference model for the Symbol Graph File Format.
-
Swift Markdown is a Swift package for parsing, building, editing, and analyzing Markdown documents. It includes support for the Block Directive elements that Swift-DocC's tutorial files rely on.
-
Swift-DocC-Render is a web application that understands and renders Swift-DocC's render JSON format.
-
Xcode consists of a suite of tools that developers use to build apps for Apple platforms. Beginning with Xcode 13, Swift-DocC is integrated into Xcode with support for building and viewing documentation for your framework and its dependencies.
docc
is the command line interface (CLI) for Swift-DocC and provides
support for converting and previewing DocC documentation.
DocC is a Swift package. If you're new to Swift package manager, the documentation here provides an explanation of how to get started and the software you'll need installed.
DocC requires Swift 5.5 which is included in Xcode 13.
-
Checkout this repository using:
git clone https://github.com/apple/swift-docc.git
-
Navigate to the root of the repository with:
cd swift-docc
-
Finally, build DocC by running:
swift build
To run docc
, run the following command:
swift run docc
You can test a locally built version of Swift-DocC in Xcode 13 or later by setting
the DOCC_EXEC
build setting to the path of your local docc
:
-
Select the project in the Project Navigator.
-
In the Build Settings tab, click '+' and then 'Add User-Defined Setting'.
-
Create a build setting
DOCC_EXEC
with the value set to/path/to/docc
.
The next time you invoke a documentation build with the "Build Documentation"
button in Xcode's Product menu, your custom docc
will be used for the build.
You can confirm that your custom docc
is being used by opening the latest build
log in Xcode's report navigator and expanding the "Compile documentation" step.
You can use docc
directly to build documentation for your Swift framework
or package. The below instructions use this repository as an example but
apply to any Swift package. Just replace any reference to SwiftDocC
below
with the name of your package.
Begin by navigating to the root of your Swift package.
cd ~/Developer/swift-docc
Then run the following to generate Symbol Graph files for your target:
mkdir -p .build/symbol-graphs && \
swift build --target SwiftDocC \
-Xswiftc -emit-symbol-graph \
-Xswiftc -emit-symbol-graph-dir -Xswiftc .build/symbol-graphs
You should now have a number of .symbols.json
files in .build/symbol-graphs
representing the provided target and its dependencies. You can copy out the files representing
just the target itself with:
mkdir .build/swift-docc-symbol-graphs \
&& mv .build/symbol-graphs/SwiftDocC* .build/swift-docc-symbol-graphs
The best place to get started with Swift-DocC-Render is with the instructions in the project's README.
If you have Xcode 13 installed, you can use the version of Swift-DocC-Render that comes included in Xcode (instead of building a copy locally) with:
export DOCC_HTML_DIR="$(dirname $(xcrun --find docc))/../share/docc/render"
Alternatively, you can clone Swift-DocC-Render and build a local copy of the renderer with these instructions:
Note: Swift-DocC-Render requires Node.js v14.
git clone https://github.com/apple/swift-docc-render.git
cd swift-docc-render
npm install
npm run build
Then point the DOCC_HTML_DIR
environment variable
to the generated /dist
folder.
export DOCC_HTML_DIR="/path/to/swift-docc-render/dist"
The docc preview
command performs a conversion of your documentation and
starts a local web server to allow for easy previewing of the built documentation.
It monitors the provided Documentation Catalog for changes and updates the preview
as you're working.
docc preview Sources/SwiftDocC/SwiftDocC.docc \
--fallback-display-name SwiftDocC \
--fallback-bundle-identifier org.swift.SwiftDocC \
--fallback-bundle-version 1.0.0 \
--additional-symbol-graph-dir .build/swift-docc-symbol-graphs
You should now see the following in your terminal:
Input: ~/Developer/swift-docc/Sources/SwiftDocC/SwiftDocC.docc
Template: ~/Developer/swift-docc-render/dist
========================================
Starting Local Preview Server
Address: http://localhost:8000/documentation/swiftdocc
========================================
Monitoring ~/Developer/swift-docc/Sources/SwiftDocC/SwiftDocC.docc for changes...
And if you navigate to http://localhost:8000/documentation/swiftdocc you'll see
the rendered documentation for SwiftDocC
.
Swift-DocC's CLI tool (docc
) will be integrated into the Swift toolchain
and follows the Swift compiler's versioning scheme.
The SwiftDocC
library is versioned separately from docc
. SwiftDocC
is under
active development and source stability is not guaranteed.
Swift-DocC tracks all bug reports with Swift JIRA. When you submit a bug report we ask that you follow the Swift Bug Reporting guidelines and provide as many details as possible.
Note: You can use the
environment
script in this repository to gather helpful environment information to paste into your bug report by running the following:bin/environment
If you can confirm that the bug occurs when using the latest commit of Swift-DocC
from the main
branch (see Building Swift-DocC),
that will help us track down the bug faster.
For feature requests, please feel free to create an issue
on Swift JIRA with the New Feature
type
or start a discussion on the Swift Forums.
Don't hesitate to submit a feature request if you see a way Swift-DocC can be improved to better meet your needs.
All user-facing features must be discussed in the Swift Forums before being enabled by default.
Please see the contributing guide for more information.