The compiling stage is where we use a modified version of GCC in order to generate information that can be used by EDoc++. The EDoc++ GCC Modification generates EDoc++ data files and can optionally place that data in one of a few places:

Of the above options, there are two ways to inform the modified GCC where to place the data. The first is to provide a command line option like -fedoc-embed, the second is to provide an environment variable like EDOC_EMBED=yes. Using the environment variable may seem a little strance but can be a very convenient method for building existing projects with EDoc++ information embedded into the binaries without having to modify the projects build system.

The GCC modification can generate EDoc++ data into two formats:

By default it will generate binary data. This is fastest and significantly smaller in size than the text format however the text format is very useful for debugging problems and is mostly used by EDoc++ maintainers.

So now we can generate some data to be analysed. So lets generate some edoc information for our example program.

g++ -fedoc-source -c main.cpp -o main.o 
g++ -fedoc-source -c extra.cpp -o extra.o 
g++ main.o extra.o -o simple

OR the equivalent

export EDOC_SOURCE=yes
g++ -c main.cpp -o main.o 
g++ -c extra.cpp -o extra.o 
g++ main.o extra.o -o simple

This will create the executable: simple and the EDoc++ data files: main.cpp.edc, extra.cpp.edc that can be used by the edoc application.

Usually when analysing a complete projects source code with EDoc++, you will compile the source of the project as per normal but using the modified GCC and first setting one of the environment variables. I have found the EDOC_EMBED=yes to be the most useful as you can then run the edoc application over the resulting binaries whether they be an application or a library and should have all the necessary data for that binary embedded into it.