---
title: "help2man"
url: https://perrotta.dev/2025/11/help2man/
last_updated: 2025-11-25
---


Thanks to [`help2man`](https://www.gnu.org/software/help2man/):

> `help2man` produces simple manual pages from the `--help` and `--version`
> output of other commands.
>
> [...]
>
> This program is intended to provide an easy way for software authors to
> include a manual page in their distribution without having to maintain that
> document.
>
> Given a program which produces reasonably standard `--help` and `--version`
> outputs, `help2man` can re-arrange that output into something which resembles
> a manual page.

...[pancake](https://github.com/thiagowfx/pancake) scripts/tools now all have
man pages! The integration was quite straightforward[^1]:

```diff
% git --no-pager show HEAD~3
commit fd319657199d740138236b0b56eb47a4fb9dc1d9 (tag: 2025.11.23.1)
Author: Thiago Perrotta <{redacted}>
Date:   Sun Nov 23 00:45:19 2025 -0300

    formula: add man page generation with help2man

    🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code)

    Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>

diff --git Formula/pancake.rb Formula/pancake.rb
index 921df77..808eac6 100644
--- Formula/pancake.rb
+++ Formula/pancake.rb
@@ -5,6 +5,8 @@ class Pancake < Formula
   sha256 "1e2ee2a7cd22a659c541361b1d50761e672a197a76176aa04683eb430bb080fd"
   head "https://github.com/thiagowfx/pancake.git", branch: "master"

+  depends_on "help2man" => :build
+
   # Script definitions: [directory, script_file, command_name]
   SCRIPTS = [
@@ -39,6 +41,14 @@ class Pancake < Formula

     # aws_login_headless requires additional Python script
     bin.install "aws_login_headless/aws_login_headless_playwright.py"
+
+    # Generate and install man pages
+    SCRIPTS.each do |_, _, command|
+      system "help2man", "--no-info", "--no-discard-stderr",
+             "--version-string=#{version}", "--output=#{command}.1",
+             "--name=#{command}", bin/command
+      man1.install "#{command}.1"
+    end
   end

   test do
```

It parses the output of `--help` to compose a man page. DRY.

[^1]: With the assistance of an LLM, as (can't believe I'll say this) _usual_.