Is there a way to produce Javadoc for a subset of public methods? For example by annotating public methods as “not part of the public API”

Question

I know how to produce Javadoc for a subset of classes/interfaces/packages. But is there a way to produce Javadoc for only a subset of public methods?

What I would pr

Answer 1

If you are not tied to javadoc, you could alternatively try doxygen with conditional sections:

public class SomeClass {
    /// @cond API1
    /**
     * This method can be called as part of API1 only.
     */
    public void method() { ... }
    /// @endcond

    /// @cond (API1 || API2)
    /**
     * This method can be called as part of API1 or API2.
     */
    public void method2() { ... }
    /// @endcond
}

When you group the methods appropriately, you can also limit the number of required @cond statements.

The methods which are actually included can then be selected by the ENABLED_SECTIONS configuration option when creating the documentation.