Silence compiiler warning about @doc on private functions

Question

Elixir wants to warn me that my @doc annotations won't get copied to the beam file:

warning: function foo/1 is private, @doc's are always discarded for private functions
  lib/hello/world.ex:12

But I'd rather use @doc for all my function documentation instead of switching between @doc and #.

How can I tell the compiler to stop warning me about this?

Answer 1

There is no way to silence compiler warnings.

In the past, people have asked about documenting private functions for use with ExDoc or DocTest. However, this not possible. Per José:

It is worth remembering that a private function does not exist outside of the module that defines it. You cannot test private functions because you can't invoke a private function outside of the module that defines it.

In fact, the compiler may even remove the private function entirely during compilation. This means a private function only exists when looking at the code and, if you need to look at the code to read it, then it is not documentation.

A private function is, for all purposes, exactly what you defined code comments to be: a temporary or semi-permanent blob which is aimed directly at developers. There is no guarantee it will exist tomorrow, which is why it is private.