How to write readme files that are automatically included into the Doxygen output?

Question

Conceptually along the lines of restructuredtext, I want to distribute readme files throughout my different source directories and then have Doxygen read and include those readme text files as part of the generated Doxygen output.

How is this done? Or do I need to spoof Doxygen by creating a pseudo C file like:

README.h:

/** 
My big long readme file describing how this library 
was created and how it should be used
*/
namespace foo_readme { }

Answer 1

If you're just using HTML output you can just use the HTML_EXTRA_FILES field of the doxygen configuration file.

If you have a plain text README file just add it to your program directory manually.

You can also spoof a .h file with the tag \mainpage to populate the index (main) page of your doxygen output.