Maven: A Developer's Notebook

Generating Project Documentation

If you are developing a Java application or library, you might want to generate JavaDoc.

How do I do that?

Simply execute the javadoc goal and Maven will generate project documentation. Here is the output of the execution of the javadoc goal:

C:\dev\mavenbook\code\genapp\test-application>maven javadoc
 _ _  _ _
|  \/  |_ _ _Apache_ _ _ _ _
| |\/| / _` \ V / -_) ' \  ~ intelligent projects ~
|_|  |_\_ _,_|\_/\_ _ _|_||_|  v. 1.0.2
  
build:start:
  
xdoc:init:
  
maven-javadoc-plugin:report:
    [mkdir] Created dir: C:\dev\mavenbook\code\genapp\test-application\target\
javadoc\src
    [javadoc] Generating Javadoc
    [javadoc] Javadoc execution
    [javadoc] Loading source files for package mdn.testapp...
    [javadoc] Constructing Javadoc information...
    [javadoc] Standard Doclet version 1.5.0_01
    [javadoc] Building tree for all the packages and classes...
    [javadoc] Generating C:\dev\mavenbook\code\genapp\test-application\target\docs\apidocs\
constant-values.html...
    [javadoc] Copying file C:\Documents and Settings\tobrien\.maven\cache\
maven-javadoc-plugin-1.7\plugin-resources\stylesheet.css to file C:\dev\mavenbook\code\
genapp\test-application\target\docs\apidocs\stylesheet.css...
    [javadoc] Building index for all the packages and classes...
    [javadoc] Building index for all classes...
    [delete] Deleting directory C:\dev\mavenbook\code\genapp\test-application\target\
javadoc\src
BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 7 seconds

Once this goal has been executed, JavaDoc is available in test-application/target/docs/apidocs ...