What comment convention is //[<module>_includes ... //]?

Question

The boost::property_tree tutorial includes an apparent comment convention:

//[debug_settings_includes
#include ...
//]
//[debug_settings_data
struct debug_settings {...};
//]
//[debug_settings_load
void debug_settings::load(const std::string &filename) {...}
//]
//[debug_settings_save
void debug_settings::save(const std::string &filename) {...}
//]
int main() {...}

Is it just an emacs org-mode convention? Are there tools that leverage this convention? Will adopting and embracing it fulfill my life?

Answer 1

It seems to be part of the documentation generation.

for example if you see the raw source for the tutorial documentation you will see that includes lines such as

First we need some includes:

[debug_settings_includes]

To store the logging configuration in the program we create a debug_settings
structure:

[debug_settings_data]

The square-bracket surrounded lines have corresponding sections in the example source file.

And when looking in the documentation itself we see that those "keywords" have been replaced by the code from the source file.

For more information read the Boost quickbook documentation.