genman

Shell script wrapper around help2man

This is a script for Debian packagers which uses help2man to automate the generation of simple man pages from the output of the --help option of executables in a package.

It is easily configured in the package source; the man page files can be generated at build time and will be installed to the correct directories.

Options:

<no arguments>
            Generate the necessary files in the source directory.

--clean     Return everything in the package debian/ directory
            to the state it was in before running the script.

--test <executable>
            Display the manpage that would be generated for this file.
            Nothing is changed in the source directory.

--makeone <executable>
            Generate a single man file for this one executable and
            place it in the working directory (package source root).

-h --help   Show a help message.

Configuration:

The script will look for files in the debian/ directory:
packagename.section.genman-list
packagename.genman-list
or
genman-list

If section ( 1~8 ) is missing, 1 is assumed.
If packagename is also missing, it is got from dpkg-parsechangelog.
The file should contain a list of the executables (paths relative to the package root) whose manpages are to be built. Shell globs may be used. Multiple genman-list files can be used, for source building multiple packages, or for different manual sections.

Built manpages will be put in debian/genman-pages/, and their paths will be appended to an existing debian/*manpages file, or put in a new manpages or packagename.manpages file.

The script should be run from the package source root directory. Run it manually before building the package, or to auto-run, add this to debian/rules:
(adjust the path to genman.sh if necessary)

override_dh_installman:
	debian/genman.sh
	dh_installman

override_dh_clean:
	dh_clean
	debian/genman.sh --clean

Also add help2man to the source package's Build-Depends in debian/control.