BuildingSynopsis

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[Synopsis] is a sophisticated Python-based documentation extraction framework which contains a real C++ parser. Its developer has been testing it on Boost.Python, so it has proven itself able to handle lots of sophisticated C++ constructs. It can currently parse C++, Python, and Corba IDL. It can generate lots of different output formats, including (apparently) BoostBook, though I haven't made that work yet.

Synopsis requires a POSIX environment, Python, a C++ compiler (G++ works especially well), and some of the [GraphViz] tools from ATT for generating inheritance graphs.

Here's how I build Synopsis for Cygwin. Instructions for other platforms are similar.

Get the latest Cygwin with Python and GCC from www.cygwin.com Make sure you get Python as part of your Cygwin installation.

Put http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/graphviz/dist/dot.exe and the libraries contained in http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/graphviz/dist/thirdparty.zip into your PATH.

Go to http://synopsis.sf.net and check out the "Synopsis" module from their CVS

    cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/synopsis login 
    cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/synopsis co Synopsis

Configure and build. In Cygwin's bash shell:

    cd Synopsis
    autoconf
    ./configure
    make

Now you can do

    make install

I update Synopsis from the CVS often so I use the following procedure instead of make install:

    # do a piece of the installation process manually
    mkdir /usr/local/share/
    mkdir /usr/local/share/synopsis
    cp share/* /usr/local/share/synopsis

    # put Synopsis in the PYTHONPATH
    export PYTHONPATH=`pwd`

Now you can build the Boost.Python demo:

    cd demo/Boost
    make boostdemo

The user manual at http://synopsis.sourceforge.net/Manual has lots of info about configuration which I haven't read yet.

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