Automate creation of documentation from Git history

In the world of software development, maintaining accurate and up-to-date documentation is crucial for the success of any project. Documentation provides insights into the codebase, guides new developers, and ensures that everyone is on the same page when it comes to understanding the project.

Traditionally, creating and updating documentation has been a manual and time-consuming process. However, with the growing popularity of DevOps and the use of Git for version control, automating the creation of documentation from Git history has become a viable option. This approach allows developers to harness the power of their code repository to generate comprehensive and accurate documentation.

In this article, we will explore how you can automate the creation of documentation from Git history using Microsoft DevOps Solutions. Specifically, we will focus on leveraging Azure DevOps and the Azure Pipelines feature to achieve this automation.

Prerequisites:

Before we begin, make sure you have the following in place:

• A Git repository hosted on a platform such as GitHub or Azure Repos.
• An Azure DevOps account with access to the repository.

Step 1: Setting up the Azure Pipelines

To automate the creation of documentation, we will use Azure Pipelines to define and execute the necessary build and release pipelines. Azure Pipelines provide a robust and flexible solution for continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) processes.

1. Open your Azure DevOps account and navigate to the desired project.
2. From the left menu, select “Pipelines” and then click on “New Pipeline” to create a new pipeline.
3. Choose your source control platform (e.g., GitHub, Azure Repos) and select the repository containing your code.
4. Select the branch from which you want to generate documentation.
5. Configure your pipeline settings according to your project’s requirements, such as the type of agent and the triggers for pipeline execution.
6. Add the necessary tasks to your pipeline. In this case, you will need a task to build the code and another task to generate the documentation.

Step 2: Building the code

In order to generate accurate documentation, we need to ensure that the code is built successfully before the documentation generation process. Azure Pipelines offers a wide range of tasks and options for building code depending on your project’s specific requirements.

1. Add a build task to your pipeline.
2. Configure the build task to compile and build your codebase. This may involve running specific commands, compiling multiple projects, or utilizing build scripts.
3. Ensure that the build task is successfully executed before proceeding to the next step.

Step 3: Generating documentation

With the code successfully built, we can now leverage the Git history to automatically generate documentation. There are several open-source tools available for this purpose, such as DocFX, Doxygen, and GitBook.

For the purpose of this article, we will focus on using DocFX, an open-source documentation framework specifically designed for .NET projects.

1. Add a documentation generation task to your pipeline.
2. Configure the task to run the necessary commands to generate documentation using DocFX. This may involve specifying the input and output paths, the target framework, and any additional configurations.
3. Execute the documentation generation task and ensure that the documentation is generated successfully.

Step 4: Publishing the documentation

Once the documentation is generated, we need to publish it to a suitable location for easy access and distribution. Azure Pipelines offers various options for publishing artifacts, such as Azure Blob Storage, FTP, or even the Azure Pipelines artifact storage.

1. Add a publishing task to your pipeline.
2. Configure the task to publish the generated documentation to your desired location. This may involve specifying the target storage, credentials, and any additional configurations.
3. Execute the publishing task and ensure that the documentation is published successfully.

Step 5: Automating the process

To fully automate the creation of documentation from Git history, we can set up triggers in Azure Pipelines to execute the pipeline whenever a relevant event occurs.

1. Navigate to your pipeline settings.
2. Configure the triggers according to your project’s requirements. For example, you can set up triggers to execute the pipeline whenever a new commit is pushed to the repository or at specific intervals.
3. Save the pipeline settings.

Conclusion

Automating the creation of documentation from Git history can greatly improve the efficiency and accuracy of your documentation processes. By leveraging Azure DevOps and Azure Pipelines, you can streamline the entire process, from building the code to generating and publishing the documentation.

Remember to explore the Microsoft documentation for detailed information on how to set up and configure Azure Pipelines based on your specific project requirements. This automation can save valuable time and effort, allowing your team to focus on developing high-quality software while ensuring that the documentation remains up-to-date and accessible.