Doxygen vs mdBook

Doxygen is a free documentation generator that turns source-code comments into reference material, parsing items such as classes, functions and variables. It supports C/C++, Lex, Java, Python, VHDL, PHP IDL, C#, Fortran, Objective-C 2.0 and some D sources. Output can be generated as HTML, PDF through LaTeX, Word through RTF or structured XML for external tools. Graphviz’s dot tool can add include-dependency, collaboration, call, directory-structure and class-hierarchy diagrams. Doxywizard provides a graphical interface for editing settings and running the generator on Windows, Linux and macOS; Doxygen also works on many Unix flavors. It supports HTML Help, docsets, Qt-Help and Eclipse Help, with more than 100 configurable options. The tool runs without registration and does not collect personal or usage data. It is self-hosted and licensed under the GNU General Public License, without express or implied warranty. Help is listed through Stack Overflow and the doxygen users mailing list; commercial feature and bug-fix support has limited capacity.

mdBook is a free command-line tool for creating books from Markdown, including product and API documentation, tutorials, and course materials. It builds static output files in a book directory that can be transferred to a web service. Integrated search and syntax highlighting for code blocks help readers navigate and read examples, while theme files allow formatting changes. Preprocessors can add custom syntax or modify content; backends can render output to multiple formats. The `mdbook test` command tests Rust code samples in a book. Project documentation describes using GitHub Actions or GitLab CI/CD to test and deploy books automatically. Developers can also import mdBook libraries or use its plugin mechanism to build custom tooling and output backends. It runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows, and Markdown is its source input. Building from source requires Rust and Cargo, with Rust 1.88 as the stated minimum. The project directs issues and feature requests to its GitHub issue tracker and relies on community contributions for bug fixes and added features. The free, open-source plan is licensed under MPL-2.0.