Qt 5 Documentation
New in Qt 5.0, each module has its own documentation package. The documentation
resides in the module sources as well as the configuration files needed to build
the module documentation. The main Qt 5.0 Reference Documentation resides in the
qtdoc repository.
There are two ways to build Qt documentation:
- run "make docs" in qt5/ or in the repositories
- run the QDoc tool for each module
Running "make docs"
To build the documentation using Makefiles, qtbase needs to be compiled and
installed.
Running qmake will create make targets to build the documentation:
- html_docs - builds only the HTML documentation
- qch_docs - packages the HTML documentation into QCH files for Qt Creator and
Qt Assistant. - docs - runs html_docs and qch_docs
Note: qch_docs needs qhelpgenerator to package the documentation. qhelpgenerator
is in the qttools repository.
These make targets use qmake's QT_INSTALL_DOCS variable as the output directory.
Running "qmake -query" will list the directory set to QT_INSTALL_DOCS.
To create all of the modules' documentation, run "make docs" in the
qt5 directory:
$> make docs # builds the bundled modules' documentation
It is also possible to build only a small subset of the documentation by using
make:
$> cd qtbase
$> make docs # builds the documentation for modules in qtbase
$> cd qtbase/src/sql
$> make docs # builds only the Qt SQL documentation
Running QDoc
QDoc is the tool for generating Qt documentation and is located in qtbase.
The simplest way to compile QDoc is to compile qtbase or only the tools in
qtbase.
$> cd qtbase/src
$> make sub-tools # compiles QDoc
Each module has a QDoc configuration file (.qdocconf). To build a module's
documentation, run the "qdoc" binary and pass the qdocconf file as a parameter.
A mandatory "outputdir" must be specified.
$> qdoc doc/config/qtdoc.qdocconf -outputdir html
Note that QDoc will delete the contents of the "html" output directory.
Packaging the Documentation
To package the documentation, the HTML files must be compiled
into a QCH file (.qch).
Required binaries:
* assistant - found in qttools
* qhelpgenerator - found in qttools
To compile the qch file for each module, first enter the output directory that
contains the .qhp file and generate the QCH file.
$> cd qtbase/doc/qtdoc #the default path for QT_INSTALL_DOCS for qtdoc
$> qhelpgenerator qtdoc.qhp #creates the QCH file called qtdoc.qch
The QCH file can then be loaded in Qt Assistant or Qt Creator. For Qt Assistant,
the QCH file can be registered to automatically load it.
$> assistant -register qtdoc.qch #to automatically load the documentation
Global Files
The qtbase/doc/global directory contains various files used by the modules to
build the documentation. These include macros, stylesheets, and images for
displaying documentation.
To include these files in a qdocconf, add the following to a qdocconf file:
include($QT_INSTALL_DOCS/global/qt-module-defaults.qdocconf)
Documentation Structure
For a typical module, the documentation will reside in the source directory.
The examples and the example documentation are in the "examples" directory.
qtbase/src/sql/doc/src #Qt SQL's documentation
qtbase/examples/sql #Qt SQL's examples
More Information
For more information about Qt 5's documentation, refer to the Qt Project wiki:
http://wiki.qt.io/Qt5DocumentationProject