Documenting a non-existing member with Doxygen

Question

I'm trying to document a python class using Doxygen. The class exposes a set of properties over d-bus, but these have no corresponding public getters/setters in the python class. Instead, they are implemented through a d-bus properties interface (Set/Get/GetAll/Introspect).

What I want to do is to be able to document these properties using something like this:

## @property package::Class::Name description

The whole package::Class works (the same method finds functions, so it finds the right class).

When running doxygen I get the following error:

warning: documented function ``package::Class::Name' was not declared or defined.

I can live with a warning, but unfortunately the property fails to appear in the documentation generated for the class, so it is not only a warning, but it is silenced as well.

So, my question is, how, if I can, do I make the non-existing property member appear in the generated docs?

Answer 1

Define the attribute inside an if 0: block:

## @class X
## @brief this is useless
class X:
    if 0:
        ## @brief whatevs is a property that doesn't exist in spacetime
        ##
        ## It is designed to make bunny cry.
        whatevs = property

This will cause it to exist in the documentation (tested with doxygen 1.8.1.2-1 on debian-squeeze). The attribute will never be made to exist at runtime, and in fact it looks like the python bytecode optimizer eliminates if statement and its body altogether.