How to include Doxygen method description in Xcode's autocomplete popup?

Question

Using Xcode , I want to have the Doxygen description of my method below the autocomplete option, like alloc:

When writing, Xcode displays the autocomplete with the comments from the documentation. You can see in the image for example, when alloc is selected from the options, it says "Returns a new instance of the receiving class" and also links to the documentation.

I have been able to document my source code with Doxygen, for instance

/** 
 This does nothing
*/
 -(void) doNothing
{
    // This does nothing
}

and I get the expected results in the HTML file that Doxygen generates, yet I don't know how to make those results appear as suggestions in Xcode.

Answer 1

Good news everyone! Xcode 5 now has built-in support for DOxygen style comments. So, you can comment your methods like this:

/*!
 * Provides an NSManagedObjectContext singleton appropriate for use on the main 
 * thread. If the context doesn't already exist it is created and bound to the 
 * persistent store coordinator for the application, otherwise the existing 
 * singleton contextis returned.
 * \param someParameter You can even add parameters
 * \returns The a shared NSManagedObjectContext for the application.
 */
+ (NSManagedObjectContext *)sharedContext;

Inline help will look like this:

Quick help will look like this:

And sidebar help will look like this:

Here's a handy code snippet you can add the your Xcode Code Snippet library to make method documentation simple:

/**
 <#description#>
 @param <#parameter#>
 @returns <#retval#>
 @exception <#throws#>
 */

Now, you can just type "doxy" and poof! You have your doxygen template.

Answer 2

What I have found to be better than a code snippet for Doxygen/Javadoc style comments is using VVDocumenter-Xcode Plugin It is great! After installing you can simply type "///" above any code you want commented and it will grab the parameters and return as well add placeholders for you to complete your comment block.