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RDoc v4.0.0 Release Notes

Release Date: 2013-02-24 // about 11 years ago

  • RDoc 4.0 includes several new features and several breaking changes. The 🔄 changes should not affect users of rdoc or ri.

    👍 Notable feature additions are markdown support and an WEBrick servlet that can 💎 serve HTML from an ri store. (This means that RubyGems 2.0+ no longer needs 📚 to build HTML documentation when installing gems.)

    🔄 Changes since RDoc 3.12.1:

    • 💥 Breaking changes

      • The default output encoding for RDoc is now UTF-8. Previously RDoc used the default external encoding which was determined from your locale. Issue #106 by Justin Baker.
      • RDoc::RI::Store is now RDoc::Store so ri data generated by RDoc 4 cannot be read by earlier versions of RDoc. RDoc::RI::Store exists as an alias of RDoc::Store so ri data from older versions can still be read. RDoc::RI::Store will be removed in RDoc 5.

      Tests that create RDoc::CodeObjects on the fly without wiring them into the documentation tree (did not use add_class, add_method, etc.) must be updated to use these methods. The documentation tree automatically attaches them to the store instance which allows lookups to work correctly. Additionally, a new method RDoc::Store#add_file must be used instead of RDoc::TopLevel.new. The latter will not be attached to the documentation tree.

      • RDoc generators must accept an RDoc::Store and an RDoc::Options in initialize. RDoc no longer passes an Array of RDoc::TopLevel objects to #generate. Use RDoc::Store#all_files instead.
      • Some markup formatters (RDoc::Markup::To*) now accept an RDoc::Options instance as the first argument. Notably, the base class Formatter and ToHtml*. (This is not universal due to the difficult at accessing the user's options instance deep inside RDoc. A future major release may remedy this.)
      • Added new markup nodes and specials that RDoc::Markup::Formatter subclasses must handle. If you're using RDoc::Markup::FormatterTestCase the new methods you need to add should be readily apparent.
      • Removed RDoc::RI::Paths::SYSDIR and ::SITEDIR. These were hidden constants so no breakage is expected. Use RDoc::RI::Paths::system_dir and ::site_dir instead.
      • RDoc::RI::Store#modules has been renamed to RDoc::Store#module_names to avoid confusion with RDoc::Store#all_modules imported from RDoc::TopLevel.
      • RDoc::RDocError has been removed. It was deprecated throughout RDoc 3.
      • ri -f html is no longer supported.
      • Comment definitions in C comments are now only discovered from the first line. A colon on a subsequent line won't trigger definition extraction. Issue #103, see also http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-core/42942
      • Fixed :stopdoc: for class A::B where A has not been seen. Issue #95 by Ryan Davis
      • RDoc::ClassModule#each_ancestor no longer yields itself if there is circular ancestry

    • Major enhancements

      • ri can now show pages (README, etc.)

      ri rdoc:README

      Will show the README for the latest version of RDoc. You can specify exact gem versions such as "rdoc-4.0:README" or view pages from the standard library documentation with "ruby:README".

      RDoc 3 did not save pages in ri data so you will need to regenerate documentation from your gems to use this feature.

      • Added Markdown as a supported format. The markdown format can be set on a per-file or per-comment basis with the +:markdown:+ directive like the rd and tomdoc formats and on a per-project basis with rdoc --markup markdown --write-options
      • Removed global state from RDoc. RDoc::Store holds the documentation tree and connects the driver to the parsers and generator. This also allows documentation parsing and generation for multiple instances, but the rdoc command-line tool does not support this.

      Due to this change RDoc::RDoc.current and RDoc::RDoc.reset no longer exist.

    • Minor enhancements

      • Added --page-dir option to give pretty names for a FAQ, guides, or other documentation you write that is not stored in the project root. For example, with the following layout:

      README.txt guides/syntax.txt guides/conversion.txt

      Running rdoc --page-dir guides will make the files in "guides" appear to be at the top level of the project. This means they will appear to exist at the top level in HTML output and you can access them with ri your_gem:syntax and ri your_gem:conversion.

      • Added --root for building documentation from outside the source dir.
      • Added current heading and page-top links to HTML headings.
      • Added a ChangeLog parser. It automatically parses files that begin with 'ChangeLog'
      • Added a table of contents to the sidebar.
      • RDoc markup format merges adjacent labels in a label or note list into a single definition list item for output.
      • RDoc now tracks use of extend. Pull request #118 by Michael Granger.
      • RDoc now tracks methods that use super. Pull request #116 by Erik Hollensbe.
      • Added methods ::system_dir, ::site_dir, ::home_dir and ::gem_dir to fetch the components of RDoc::RI::Paths.path individually.
      • Added support for rb_file_const.
      • RDoc now processes files in sorted order. Issue #71 by Vít Ondruch
      • RDoc now warns with --verbose when methods are duplicated. Issue #71 by Vít Ondruch
      • ri will display documentation for all methods in a class if -a is given. Issue #57 by casper
      • The RDoc coverage report will report line information for attributes, constants and methods missing documentation. Issue #121 by Zachary Scott
      • RDoc now reports a warning for files that are unreadable due to permissions problems.
      • RDoc controls documentation generation for RubyGems 2.0+

    • 🐛 Bug fixes

      • Fixed parsing of multibyte files with incomplete characters at byte 1024. Ruby bug #6393 by nobu, patch by Nobuyoshi Nakada and Yui NARUSE.
      • Fixed rdoc -E. Ruby Bug #6392 and (modified) patch by Nobuyoshi Nakada
      • Added link handling to Markdown output. Bug #160 by burningTyger.
      • Fixed HEREDOC output for the limited case of a heredoc followed by a line end. When a HEREDOC is not followed by a line end RDoc is not currently smart enough to restore the source correctly. Bug #162 by Zachary Scott.
      • Fixed parsing of executables with shebang and encoding comments. Bug #161 by Marcus Stollsteimer
      • RDoc now ignores methods defined on constants instead of creating a fake module. Bug #163 by Zachary Scott.
      • Fixed ChangeLog parsing for FFI gem. Bug #165 by Zachary Scott.
      • RDoc now links #=== methods. Bug #164 by Zachary Scott.
      • Allow [] following argument names for TomDoc. Bug #167 by Ellis Berner.
      • Fixed the RDoc servlet for home and site directories. Bug #170 by Thomas Leitner.
      • Fixed references to methods in the RDoc servlet. Bug #171 by Thomas Leitner.
      • Fixed debug message when generating the darkfish root page. Pull Request #174 by Thomas Leitner.
      • Fixed deletion of attribute ri data when a class was loaded then saved. Issue #171 by Thomas Leitner.
      • Fully qualified names for constants declared from the top level are now attached to their class or module properly.
      • Fixed table of contents display in HTML output for classes and modules.
      • Incremental ri builds of C files now work. C variable names from previous runs are now saved between runs.
      • A word that is directly followed by a multi-word tidy link label no longer disappears. (Like text{link}[http://example])
      • Fixed legacy template support. Pull Request #107 by Justin Baker.
      • An HTML class in a verbatim section no longer triggers ruby parsing. Issue #92 by Vijay Dev
      • Improved documentation for setting the default documentation format for your ruby project. Issue #94 by Henrik Hodne
      • Fixed handling of LANG in the RDoc::Options tests. Issue #99 by Vít Ondruch
      • RDoc no longer quits when given an entry that is not a file or directory. Issue #101 by Charles Nutter
      • Fixed bug in syntax-highlighting that would corrupt regular expressions. Ruby Bug #6488 by Benny Lyne Amorsen.
      • "class Object" no longer appears in the coverage report if all its methods are documented. This suppresses a false positive for libraries that add toplevel methods. Pull Request #128 by Zachary Scott.
      • Fixed test_gen_url test name in TestRDocMarkupToHtml. Pull Request #130 by Zachary Scott.
      • Comment-defined methods ahead of define_method are now discovered. Issue #133 by eclectic923
      • Fixed detection of define_method documentation. Issue #138 by Marvin Gülker.
      • Fixed lexing of character syntax (?z). Reported by Xavier Noria.
      • Add license to gem spec. Issue #144 by pivotalcommon
      • Fixed comment selection for classes. Pull request #146 by pioz
      • Fixed parsing of def self.&() end. Issue #148 by Michael Lucy
      • Generated RD parser files are now included in the gem. Issue #145 by Marvin Gülker
      • Class and module aliases now create new classes to avoid duplicate names in the class list. Issue #143 by Richard Schneeman, Rails Issue #2839
      • RDoc::Markup::Parser now correctly matches indentation of lists when multibyte characters are used in the list labels. Issue #140 by burningTyger
      • Fixed mangling of email addresses that look like labels. Issue #129 by Tobias Koch
      • Classes and modules in a C file may now be created in any order. Issue #124 by Su Zhang
      • A metaprogrammed method supports the :args: directive. Issue #100
      • A metaprogrammed method supports the :yields: directive.
      • RDoc will now look for directives up to the end of the line. For example, class B < A; end # :nodoc: will now hide documentation of B. Issue #125 by Zachary Scott
      • Fixed tokenization of % when it is not followed by a $-string type
      • Fixed display of END in documentation examples in HTML output
      • Fixed tokenization of reserved words used as new-style hash keys
      • RDoc now handles class << $gvar by ignoring the body
      • Fixed parsing of class A:: B.
      • Worked around bug in RDoc::RubyLex where tokens won't be reinterpreted after unget_tk.
      • Fixed class << ::Foo writing documentation to /Foo.html
      • Fixed class ::A referencing itself from inside its own namespace.

    🔄 Changes since RDoc 4.0.0.rc.2:

    • 🐛 Bug fix
      • Templates now use the correct encoding when generating pages. Issue #183 by Vít Ondruch