Pat's Taglet Collection

I've written a couple Taglets for JDK1.4 javadoc. The most useful is the @todo Tag. The @todo taglet can be used anywhere a standalone javadoc tag can be used. For example:

	/**
	 * This is a javadoc comment for a class.
         *
         * @todo Write the class.
         * @todo Debug the class.
         */
	public class A_Class {
        }
      
The todo items will be included after the standard @param, @return, etc. items in the generated javadoc. Browse my javadoc below to see some real examples.

In addition an @reviewedby tag is provided. This is useful for documenting code reviews (and even for tracking missing code reviews). See the ReviewedBy documentation for details.

See the JDK1.4 javadoc Taglet Overview for a description of taglets.

The source to Pat's Taglet Collection is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

Please send any comments, suggestions, requests for future announcements, or bug-reports to taglets@tullmann.org.

Instructions

Download the .jar file (below). Now run javadoc like so (for the @todo taglet):

javadoc -taglet org.tullmann.taglets.ToDo -tagletpath /path/to/patstaglets.jar whatever/you/want/to/javadoc/*.java

If you get an error saying: javadoc: Error - Exception java.lang.ClassNotFoundException thrown while trying to register Taglet ToDo. You may have to manually add the JDK lib/tools.jar to the javadoc classpath (via -classpath). You'll have to scrounge around in your JDK to to find lib/tools.jar (it should be in ${java.home}/lib/tools.jar). I believe it is a bug in the JDK that you need to specify this.

Run the taglet once and it will install its default values into your personal preferences tree. You can edit the preferences to change the coloring and some of the layout of ToDo items in the generated javadoc. Look at the doc for ListTag below for details.

A simple preference setting utility, PrefHack is included that can set preferences for the Taglet Collection.

Downloads

  • Download patstaglets.jar (a .jar of the generated classes).
  • Download patstaglets-src.zip (a .zip of the source).
  • Browse the documentation (which includes several examples of the @todo tag in action.)
  • History

  • April 2, 2002: Second release.
  • January 15, 2002: First release.

  • Patrick Tullmann
    Last modified: Tue Apr 2, 2002