# Welcome to gi-docgen’s documentation!

GI-DocGen is a document generator for GObject-based libraries. GObject is the base type system of the GNOME project. GI-Docgen reuses the introspection data generated by GObject-based libraries to generate the API reference of these libraries, as well as other ancillary documentation.

## Installation

### Running GI-DocGen uninstalled

You can run GI-DocGen from its repository, by calling:

    ./gi-docgen.py

GI-DocGen will automatically detect this case.

### Installing GI-DocGen via pip

To install GI-DocGen, you will need to have the following pieces of software available on your computer:

- Python 3.6, or later

- pip

Run the following command:

    pip3 install --user gi-docgen

After running the command above, make sure to have the `$HOME/.local/bin` directory listed in your `$PATH` environment variable.

To update GI-DocGen, run the following command:

    pip3 install --user --upgrade gi-docgen

## Usage

First, read Using GI-DocGen.

Additional documentation on how to control the generation of your project’s API reference is available in the Project configuration page.

## Disclaimer

GI-DocGen is not a general purpose documentation tool for C libraries.

While GI-DocGen can be used to generate API references for most GObject/C libraries that expose introspection data, its main goal is to generate the reference for GTK and its immediate dependencies. Any and all attempts at making this tool more generic, or to cover more use cases, will be weighted heavily against its primary goal.

If you need a general purpose documentation tool, I strongly recommend:

- HotDoc

- Doxygen

- GTK-Doc

## Copyright and Licensing terms

Copyright 2021 GNOME Foundation

GI-DocGen is released under the terms of the Apache License, version 2.0, or under the terms of the GNU General Publice License, either version 3.0 or, at your option, any later version.