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Shell Script Documentation

Write documentation in comments and render it with templates.

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shellman can generate man pages, wiki pages and help text using documentation written in shell scripts comments.

For example:

#!/bin/bash

## \brief Just a demo
## \desc This script actually does nothing.

main() {
  case "$1" in
    ## \option -h, --help
    ## Print this help and exit.
    -h|--help) shellman "$0"; exit 0 ;;
  esac
}

## \usage demo [-h]
main "$@"

Output when calling ./demo -h:

Usage: demo [-h]

This script actually does nothing.

Options:
  -h, --help            Print this help and exit.

You can see more examples in the documentation: https://pawamoy.github.io/shellman/.

Demo

In the demo above we saw the three builtin templates: helptext, manpage and wikipage.

You can use your own templates by specifying them with the --template path:my/template syntax.

You can also write a plugin, see the docs: https://pawamoy.github.io/shellman/plugins.

Installation¤

With pip:

pip install shellman

With pipx:

python3.8 -m pip install --user pipx
pipx install shellman

Some projects using shellman¤

  • shellm — A collection of scripts and libraries built on a core inclusion-system, all installable with basher. Here are a few examples:
  • daemon — A library that facilitates the writing of daemonized scripts that consume files in a watched directory.
  • debug — A simple script that sets the verbose/dry-run/debug Bash flags before running another script.
  • format — Format your output with style and color.
  • home — A home for your shell scripts!
  • loop — Control the flow of your loops (pause/resume/etc.).