Javadoc subpackages in Fedora provide automatically generated API documentation for Java libraries and applications. Java Development Kit comes with tool called javadoc. This tool can be used for generating the documentation from specially formated comments in Java source files. Output of this tool, together with license files, usually represents only content of javadoc subpackages. Note javadoc invocation is typically handled by build system and package maintainer doesn’t need to deal with it directly.

Javadoc subpackage shouldn’t depend on its base package and vice versa. The rationale behind this rule is that documentation can usually be used independently from application/library and therefore base package doesn’t need to be always installed. Users are given an option to install application and documentation separately.