Documenting modules with Puppet Strings

Produce complete, user-friendly module documentation by using Puppet Strings. Strings uses tags and code comments, along with the source code, to generate documentation for a module's classes, defined types, functions, tasks, plans, and resource types and providers.

If you are a module author, add descriptive tags and comments with the code for each element (class, defined type, function, or plan) in your module. Strings extracts information from the module's Puppet and Ruby code, such as data types and attribute defaults. Whenever you update code, update your documentation comments at the same time. Both module users and authors can generate module documentation with Strings. Even if the module contains no code comments, Strings generates minimal documentation based on the information it can extract from the code.

Strings outputs documentation in HTML, JSON, or Markdown formats.

• HTML output, which you can read in any web browser, includes the module README and reference documentation for all classes, defined types, functions, tasks, task plans, and resource types.

• JSON output includes the reference documentation only, and writes it to either STDOUT or to a file.

• Markdown output includes the reference documentation only, and writes the information to a REFERENCE.md file.

Puppet Strings is based on the YARD Ruby documentation tool. To learn more about YARD, see the YARD documentation.

Related information

• Documenting modules

• Puppet Strings style guide