SandCastle: Generating links for C# class name

Question

When I used doxygen for my C++ projects, I simply wrote:

/**
* I can refer to SomeClass or even SomeClass::someMethod() without special markup.
*/

Then doxygen generates links from "SomeClass" and "SomeClass::someMethod()" strings to appropriate documentation.

Now I work with C# and want to use SandCastle for generation documentation form C# code. I realized that links should be constructed with xml tag:

/// <see cref="SomeClass"/> and <see cref="SomeClass.someMethod()"/>

I think that it is very cumbersome and unreadable.

Is it any way to generate links for class and methods without special markup? How do you generate documentation for C# projects?

Thank you.

Answer 1

Is it any way to generate links for class and methods without special markup?

I don't think so. Actually the XML documentation (format) is not a feature of sandcastle, but of the C# compiler. Sandcastle (and other tools, like NDoc) "simply" build on it.

How do you generate documentation for C# projects?

We're using Sandcastle and the Sandcastle Helpfile Builder (SHFB). Also we're using GhostDoc and ReSharper which help with writing and (on-the-fly) validating XML comments, for example if the type, method, or else you reference actually exist.

I think you could also use Doxygen and thus Doxygen style comments with your C# code, but personally I have never tried it. You'd have to check the Doxygen website. But you would miss out on features other tools provide based on the XML documentation (like ReSharper's quick documentation) or most prominently, help-/description texts for Intellisense.