If I have a folder structure with .java files in it, and I want to point JavaDoc at it and have it tell me JavaDoc info, how do I do that? One way is to extend Doclet, but then I can only call it from the command line with javadoc -doclet ... However, what if I just want to do it from ordinary code?
What I ended up doing was this. Using the execute() method you mentioned I run a custom Doclet on my files, and the Doclet connects back to the program using Sockets and gives back the information I needed. This would have been extremely easy if the DocImpl classes were Serializable, but unfortunately (like any other useful Java class Ive ever tried to serialize), they're not. I eneded up just passing a Map of method names and descriptions, which basically worked all right. Hope this helps someone!
Looks like you found a solution. Here are a couple of belated answers, passed along from an engineer...
> Do you know how my Doclet class could communicate with the rest of the program?
The easiest (not really clean) might be to just create a singleton for
communication, which is shared by all instances of the doclet, and
whatever other point in the program care about it.
> Does anyone know how Eclipse or Netbeans reads and displays the Javadoc info when you
> import a library? Do you think they just have their own parsers, or do they do it through
> the javadoc api?
Eclipse has its own parsers. Netbeans uses javac. - Hey, Netbeans
comes from Sun, you'd expect that.
