Jsdoc: JsDoc produces no documentation and no errors

[crfroehlich]

I originally submitted this as issue no 46 in the grunt-jsdoc project, but it seems unlikely to be related to the grunt-jsdoc code. A full gist of the initial report of the fault is located there, but I have also assembled the following jsdoc --explain gist for reporting here. See also the original gist here.

The core of my original report:

If I run jsdoc against only a single file, in the doc folder specified I get an index.html file with a single link to Main, which points to file:///C:/. If I run it against all of my JS files, I get an index.html file with links to only 2 classes, each with a single method defined. No errors are reported in either case. Both executions are documented in the gist.

I'm a bit perplexed. I have scrupulously documented nearly every public and private method in my codebase with jsdoc3 style comments.

I am using the latest version of jsdoc, running on Windows 7 x64, Node 0.10.12 to install, and Java 7 v21. If I execute jsdoc --debug, I get the Rhino debugger, but (with or without break on exceptions enabled), I can step through the entire stack without exception/breaking.

[crfroehlich]

Ok. After some deep soul googling, I think I'm finally on the path to yes. After starting from @darlingjs blog post Creation of JavaScript Documentation, which is what launched my journey; I found @jewelsjacobs post Finally got JsDocs working with Node in which she ultimately opted to settle for the older jsdoc-toolkit. Unsatisfied, I finally found post How I introduced JsDoc by Simon Williams.

The key appears to be using

/**
* @memberOf jQuery
*/

After doing so in a single file, a few of my methods began appearing in the output. Then the remaining problems became much more obvious, most critically--when using Object.defineProperty, you have to specify the @name decorator. By whatever means JsDoc is parsing the AST, it is not associating property/method names with their corresponding objects; since this is the only way I add new properties/methods--I didn't get any documentation.

I think this is problem solved for me.

[hegemonic]

Glad to hear you got things working.

Right now JSDoc treats calls to Object.defineProperty just like any other function call. Changing this behavior will take a bit of work to implement, but I think it's worth doing. I'll file a new feature request.