What is DocItOut?

DocItOut is a free open source software for generating web documentation in HTML format based on the comments and statements in the SAS source code. The syntax for these comments are 100% compatible with SAS... in another word, your SAS program will run normally even after you have inserted these comments. By specifying the root directory of your project source code, DocItOut recursively traverses each subdirectory and parses the comments and statements from each SAS file, which has ".sas" suffix. Other file formats will be ignored. Then, DocItOut generates a web documentation in a specified directory. Please assure that DocItOut does not and will never alter your SAS files.

DocItOut received both Honorable Mention Award and People's Choice Award at 2008 SAS Global Forum in San Antonio, Texas. You can download the published paper here to learn more about this software.

Download

You can download the latest DocItOut release here.

Who Should Use DocItOut?

Well, for a start, DocItOut benefits anyone that documents the source code. :) DocItOut is somewhat written to reward this "minority" group of people so that these useful documentations can be easily made available to others through a more accessible medium, which is website.

If you are one of those who never documents your code, don't worry. DocItOut will still properly parse any necessary information from your code and create a formatted web documentation for you. However, it is highly recommended to instill the habit of documenting your own code because you know your own implementations the best.

Why DocItOut?

There is currently no available tool that enables a SAS programmer to easily publish the source code documentation in the web. I believe the main reason is because most developers that contribute to the open source development do not have the "dough" to get some SAS licenses. Thus, no one bothers to build one.

I find it difficult and cumbersome to read documentations (if there is even one) in each SAS file. My point is a few of us spend tremendous amount of time keeping the documentations up-to-date, and yet nobody seems to be able to find them. Most of the documentations are either well hidden in the directory maze or get cluttered within the code. Thus, this makes it harder to either traverse directory after directory or scrolling down thousand lines of code.

My main motivation is to develop a tool called "DocItOut" that allows anyone in the world to easily publish the project source code documentations in the web... and it is FREE!!! In effort to standardize all documentations, I have carefully tailored DocItOut's comment syntax based on Javadoc (for JAVA, of course). Thus, the look and feel of the generated web documentation may look very similar to the ones generated by Javadoc.

Minimum Requirements

• Running in Windows environment - The main reason is because I have limited environments to test the DocItOut graphical user interface (GUI). However, I may produce a non-GUI version in the future that allows any environments to execute the tool through command line. If your source code directory resides in UNIX environment, you can map a network drive (through Samba) to this directory in Windows environment before running DocItOut.
• Requires at least Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 6.x - Most computers have version 1.4 by default. In order for you to even get pass through the DocItOut installation, you need to first install the latest JRE from http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp . From this link, download and install the latest Java Runtime Environment (JRE). Finally, restart your computer and run the DocItOut installation again.

Getting Started

Documenting your SAS code are very easy and straightforward. Please visit Tutorial for more information.

How to Report Bugs or Request Features

If you would like to report any bugs found or request new features to be incorporated into this tool, please submit them here. It is highly recommended for you to attach a sample file that generates the problem (or a feature I should say) so that I can reproduce the problem on my side to determine the cause. Failure to do so may result long delays, thus nothing will get fixed.

How to Link to this Project

You can insert this ultra cool logo in your webpage. Just copy and paste the below tags into your HTML file.