How to get @borrows tag working in JSDoc

Question

I have been having a hard time getting the @borrows tag working in JSDoc. I have been trying to get the documentation from one function and us it as documentation for a second function. But I don't seem to be able to even get a simple example working!

/**
 * This is the description for funcA
 */
var funcA = function() {};

/**
 * @borrows funcA as funcB
 */
var funcB = function() {};

I was expecting this to output documentation for both functions with both exactly the same. However only funcA is only has a description.

Answer 1

The @borrows tag doesn't seem to work directly on a symbol, but only indirectly. For example I had:

/** does amazing things */
function origFunc = function() {};

/**
 * @borrows origFunc as exportedFunc
 */
exports.exportedFunc = origFunc;

but I, like you, got nothing useful in the generated doc.

That is because, it seems, that the @borrows tag operates on a container. (If you'll notice in the examples the @borrows tag is on the "util" module/namespace, not the renamed symbol.)

So this worked for me:

/** does amazing things */
function origFunc = function() {};

/**
 * @borrows origFunc as exportedFunc
 */
exports = {
  exportedFunc: origFunc,
}

Seems like a bug in @borrows though. (Or at least a bug in the documentation.)