How to Generate source documentation using Sandcastle

Sandcastle is one of the best tools of creating source documentation which are freely available. I found a very good tutorial written on How to Generate source documentation using Sandcastle. Following is the link of it.

http://bloggingabout.net/blogs/jschreuder/archive/2007/03/20/using-sandcastle-is-increasingly-mature.aspx

While been thanking to the author of the above article I will explain the proceedure with more screen shots and steps as follows. Hope this will be helpful for beginners.

First you have to download and install the CTP and the Sandcastle Helper.

Download March CTP
Download Eric Woodruff's Sandcastle helper.

After installing above software we following is the simple way of creating a source documentation using them.

First you have to make sure that the project created XML document. Click on project properties and tick the checkbox XML Documentation File and give the path. Refer to the following image if it is not clear.



Assume that your project name is "testProject" and when build the project you will see the project assembly testProject.dll and the XML file testProject.XML is there in the bin folder.

Now open the SandCastle Help File Builder UI and go to File --> New Project and give a name and a place that the new project to be saved ad follows.



Then you will get the SandCastle Help File Builder UI like follows.



In the right side of the above image you can see the Project Explorer Window. Under the project as following image shows add the testProject.dll (Your project assembly) as the Documentation source. Then you will see testProject.XML (Your project XML file) also added to the Project Explorer.



Finally what you have to do is click on Build the Help File Icon as follows.



It will take some time to build the help file according to the size of your source code. After build succeeded you can click on Documentation --> View Help file to view the help file. Or else find the location of the Help File (.chm).