Documenting Your Packages

The go doc tool also shows the comments in your package: the comments must start with // and precede the declarations (package, types, functions …) with no blank line in between. go doc will produce a series of Html-pages, one for each go file. For example:

• In the folder doc_example we have the folders sort and sort_main, containing the go-files sort and sortmain,respectively, with some comments in the sort file (the files need not be compiled).
• Navigate on the command-line to the folder doc_example and issue the command:

go doc doc_example/sort

This prints out on the command-line:

Sorting using a general interface
func Float64sAreSorted(a []float64) bool
func IntsAreSorted(a []int) bool
func IsSorted(data Interface) bool
func Sort(data Interface)
func SortFloat64s(a []float64)
func SortInts(a []int)
func SortStrings(a []string)
func StringsAreSorted(a []string) bool
type Float64Array []float64
type IntArray []int
type Interface interface{ ... }
type StringArray []string

go doc doc_example/sort_main

Which prints out:

This package gives an example of how to use a custom package with interfaces

Go doc can also be used as a web server showing your source files in a browser. To see them, run the command godoc –http=:6060 in the folder $GOPATH/src, and navigate in your browser to http://localhost:6060.

---

Now the documentation of the custom package is ready. In the next lesson, you’ll learn some testing and installation processes.