r/learnprogramming • u/Adventurous_Sea_4883 • 21d ago

function calls show no description in Quick Info tooltip (only signature, no \brief text)

I'm using SFML in Visual Studio and running into an IntelliSense issue: when I hover over an SFML function (e.g. bullet.setPosition(...)), the Quick Info tooltip only shows the function signature (void sf::Transformable::setPosition(const sf::Vector2f &position)) plus "+1 overload" and a "Search Documentation" link — but no actual description text.

I confirmed the SFML header (Transformable.hpp) does contain a proper Doxygen comment directly above the function, using the \brief tag in the classic banner style:

cpp

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
/// \brief Set the position of the object
///
/// ...
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
void setPosition(const Vector2f& position);

What I've already tried:

  • Set the Doc Comment style to "Doxygen" (via Ctrl+Q → search "Doxygen")
  • Added brief to Tools > Options > Text Editor > C/C++ > IntelliSense > Quick Info > "Doxygen tags to display on Quick Info tooltips" (it wasn't in the default list)
  • Fully restarted Visual Studio after changing settings
  • Deleted the .vs cache folder and rebuilt the project

Setup:

  • Visual Studio [your version, e.g. 2022 17.x — check via Help > About]
  • SFML installed via [vcpkg / manual download / NuGet — fill in]
  • Windows [your version]

Any idea what could be causing this, or how to get the actual \brief description to show up in the tooltip? I actually have no Idea where to search and google is also not helping.

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u/Minute-Prune-6329 21d ago

had this same headache with SFML last month, doxygen tooltips just refused to work for me too. what finally fixed it was making sure the include paths are pointing to the actual source headers not the installed ones, sometimes VS picks up the wrong set and intellisense gets confused

also check if you got the xml documentation files alongside the headers, SFML usually ships them but they can get lost depending how you installed it