Is it possible to tell jsdoc to look in a file separate from the source code for documentation of that code?

Question

I would like to keep inline comments as short as possible, since my experience is that comments of more than 3 or 4 lines tend to be glossed over, creating a lot of unnecessary "read the manual lines".

I'm required by legacy to adhere to a jsdoc-compatible format for documenting code. It requires that a lot of self evident things be declared explicitly if they're to be documented correctly. Practically every tag can fall in this category. Even the ones that don't are often useless to a working developer.

My vision is to have a quick summary inside the code itself that developers will actually read, but refer to a separate file (or even a comment dump in the same file, separate from where developers will be working) for additional tagging, like this:

/**
 *  Used when making an example of the argument.
 *  @include someotherplace
 */
function example(argument) { stuff;}

...lots more code...

/**
 *  someotherplace
 *  @param argument The victim
 *  @since forever
 *  @other stuff
 */

A different tool or a plugin would be acceptable, I'm really only stuck with the syntax. Another alternative would be a tool with some really good implicit documentation creation

Answer 1

With jsdoc3, I do not think there is a way to get what a perfect solution without having to write a new plugin. (I do not know of a plugin that would already do it.)

However, it is possible to abuse the jsdoc tags to get something which is not perfect but is functional.

/**
 * @module foo
 */


/**
 * Used when making an example of the argument.
 * @see {module:foo.example_type}
 */
function example(argument) {
    //...
}

/**
 * someotherplace
 * @typedef {function} module:foo.example_type
 * @param argument The victim
 * @since forever
 */

The key is to create a type definition with a unique name, and then use @see to link to that definition. @module and module: are just there to show it can be done with modules. They can just be stripped for cases where modules are not needed.