Documentation Generation

Motivation

The ROS Scan-N-Plan application is complete and tested. It is important to thoroughly document the code so that other developers may easily understand this program.

Scan-N-Plan Application: Problem Statement

We have completed and tested our Scan-N-Plan program and we need to release the code to the public. Your goal is to make documentation viewable in a browser. You may accomplish this by annotated the myworkcell_core package with doxygen syntax and generating documentation with rosdoc_lite.

Scan-N-Plan Application: Guidance

Annotate the Source Code

  1. Open the myworkcell_node.cpp file from the previous example.
  2. Annotate above the ScanNPlan Class:
/**
* @brief The ScanNPlan class is a client of the vision and path plan servers.  The ScanNPLan class takes
* these services, computes transforms and published commands to the robot.
*/
class ScanNPlan
  1. Annotate above the start method
 /**
  * @brief start performs the robot alorithms functions of the ScanNPlan of
  * the node. The start method makes a service request for a transform that
  * localizes the part.  The start method moves the "manipulator"
  * move group to the localization target.  The start method requests
  * a cartesian path based on the localization target.  The start method
  * sends the cartesian path to the actionlib client for execution, bypassig
  * MoveIt!
  * @param base_frame is a string that specifies the reference frame
  * coordinate system.
  */
void start()
  1. Annotate above the flipPose
 /**
  * @brief flipPose rotates the input transform by 180 degrees about the
  * x-axis
  * @param in geometry_msgs::Pose reference to the input transform
  * @return geometry_msgs::Pose of the flipped output transform
  */
geometry_msgs::Pose transformPose(const geometry_msgs::Pose& in) const
  1. Annotate above the main function
/**
* @brief main is the ros interface for the ScanNPlan Class
* @param argc ROS uses this to parse remapping arguments from the command line.
* @param argv ROS uses this to parse remapping arguments from the command line.
* @return ROS provides typical return codes, 0 or -1, depending on the
* execution.
*/
int main(int argc, char** argv)
  1. Additional annotations may be placed above private variables or other important code elements.

Generate documentation

  1. Install rosdoc_lite:
sudo apt install ros-kinetic-rosdoc-lite
  1. Build the package so we can source it later:
catkin build
  1. Source the package
source ./devel/setup.bash
  1. run rosdoc_lite to generate the documentation
roscd myworkcell_core
rosdoc_lite .

View the Documentation

  1. Open the documentation in a browser:
firefox doc/html/index.html
  1. Navigate to Classes -> ScanNPlan and view the documentation.