Documentation generation for nullable types

Question

There was a question about the generation of documentation by C# compiler.

Source code:

public class SomeClass {
    /// <summary>
    /// Do some work
    /// </summary>
    /// <returns cref="Nullable{Boolean}">
    /// Some stuff
    /// </returns>
    public bool? SomeMethod() {
       return false;
    }
}

Compiler generated XML documentation fragment for method SomeMethod:

<member name="...." >
 ....
  <returns cref="T:System.Nullable`1">SomeStuff</returns>
</member>

Is there any way to force it to produce

<member name="...." >
 ....
  <returns cref="T:System.Nullable{System.Boolean}">SomeStuff</returns>
</member>

instead.?

Answer 1

Unfortunately no.

There is no way to change how the .xml files are produced.

Instead you will have to change whatever it is that is processing those files to handle that syntax, or change the XML documentation.

The problem here is that Nullable{Boolean} is no different from Nullable{T} because the part between the brackets is not understood as a type, but as a generic type parameter. T, Boolean, XYZ, it's all the same thing.

You will either have to change the tool that reads this (and I don't know how you would do that), or write out your references differently:

/// <returns>
/// <see cref="Nullable{T}/> with <c>T</c> being <see cref="Boolean"/>.
/// </returns>