Javadoc fails on parsing errors

Question

Hi there,
I am trying to generrate javadocs for hundreds of files. Some of them do not compile
while some of them have parsing errors (missing semicolons etc.). When I try to
generate the javadoc, it loads each file, prints errors for the one which are not parsable
and in the end prints the total number of errors and exits.
Is it possible to generate javadoc for the files which are valid and ignore the files with
errors?
Thanks

Answer 1

Javadoc is somewhat lenient. As the documentation says:
  In many cases, the Javadoc tool allows you to generate documentation for source files whose
  code is incomplete or erroneous. This is a benefit that enables you to generate documentation
  before all debugging and troubleshooting is done. For example, according to the Java Language
  Specification, a class that contains an abstract method should itself be declared abstract. The
  Javadoc tool does not check for this, and would proceed without a warning, whereas the javac
  compiler stops on this error. The Javadoc tool does do some primitive checking of doc
  comments. Use the DocCheck doclet to check the doc comments more thoroughly. This is a tricky area, because it's difficult enough to generate the proper
documentation when the classes compile. When Javadoc encounters
an error in a file, it would need to recover gracefully, back out any changes
that file caused, then proceed with the next file.
Secondly, I fail to understand why should the system not think its a java file if it doesnt
compile. Let's compare this to javac. javac compiles all the files it can and gives error on
rest of them. javadoc on the other hand fails outright and doesnt generate javadoc for any
class at all.
Any comments from javadoc team?I asked the javac/javadoc engineer, and here is his reply:
"The java compiler (javac) generates no code for any classes if it
finds a syntax error in any one of them. Just the same as javadoc."
-Doug Kramer
Javadoc team