.NET Core–Generate documentation

Although I try to make my API’s as descriptive as possible, sometimes good documentation can still make a difference.

One way to enable documentation generation is through Visual Studio:

• Right click on your project and select Properties.
• On the Properties window go to the Build tab.
• Check the XML documentation file checkbox
• Don’t forget to save these changes.

As a result the following is added to your csproj file:

	<PropertyGroup Condition="'$(Configuration)|$(Platform)'=='Debug|AnyCPU'">
	<DocumentationFile>C:\Projects\Example\eShopExample.Infrastructure\eShopExample.Infrastructure.xml</DocumentationFile>
	</PropertyGroup>

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There are a few things I don’t like about this:

• First a condition is applied to the PropertyGroup which doesn’t seem necessary
• Second an absolute path is used to define where to generate the documentation XML

So I would recommend no longer to use this approach. What you can do instead is directly manipulate the csproj file and add the following line to a PropertyGroup:

<GenerateDocumentationFile>true</GenerateDocumentationFile>

view raw Example.csproj hosted with ❤ by GitHub