help2man - Man Page

generate a simple manual page

Examples (TL;DR)

Generate a man page for an executable: help2man executable
Specify the "name" paragraph in the man page: help2man executable --name name
Specify the section for the man page (defaults to 1): help2man executable --section section
Output to a file instead of stdout: help2man executable --output path/to/file
Display help: help2man --help

Description

`help2man' generates a man page out of `--help' and `--version' output.

-n, --name=STRING: description for the NAME paragraph
-s, --section=SECTION: section number for manual page (1, 6, 8)
-m, --manual=TEXT: name of manual (User Commands, ...)
-S, --source=TEXT: source of program (FSF, Debian, ...)
-L, --locale=STRING: select locale (default "C")
-i, --include=FILE: include material from `FILE'
-I, --opt-include=FILE: include material from `FILE' if it exists
-o, --output=FILE: send output to `FILE'
-p, --info-page=TEXT: name of Texinfo manual
-N, --no-info: suppress pointer to Texinfo manual
-l, --libtool: exclude the `lt-' from the program name
--help: print this help, then exit
--version: print version number, then exit

EXECUTABLE should accept `--help' and `--version' options and produce output on stdout although alternatives may be specified using:

-h, --help-option=STRING: help option string
-v, --version-option=STRING: version option string
--version-string=STRING: version string
--no-discard-stderr: include stderr when parsing option output

Include Files

Additional material may be included in the generated output with the --include and --opt-include options. The format is simple:

[section]
text

/pattern/
text

Blocks of verbatim *roff text are inserted into the output either at the start of the given [section] (case insensitive), or after a paragraph matching /pattern/.

Patterns use the Perl regular expression syntax and may be followed by the i, s or m modifiers (see perlre(1)).

Lines before the first section or pattern which begin with `-' are processed as options. Anything else is silently ignored and may be used for comments, RCS keywords and the like.

The section output order (for those included) is:

NAME
Synopsis
Description
OPTIONS
other
ENVIRONMENT
FILES
EXAMPLES
Author
Reporting Bugs
Copyright
See Also

Any [NAME] or [Synopsis] sections appearing in the include file will replace what would have automatically been produced (although you can still override the former with --name if required).

Other sections are prepended to the automatically produced output for the standard sections given above, or included at other (above) in the order they were encountered in the include file.

Placement of the text within the section may be explicitly requested by using the syntax [<section], [=section] or [>section] to place the additional text before, in place of, or after the default output respectively.

Availability

The latest version of this distribution is available on-line from:

ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/help2man/

Author

Written by Brendan O'Dea <bod@debian.org>

Reporting Bugs

Report bugs to <bug-help2man@gnu.org>.

Copyright

Copyright © 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2020, 2021, 2022 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Info

December 2022 GNU help2man 1.49.3