Arch Linux

MightyPork

Member

From: Prague, Czech Republic

Registered: 2014-06-16

Posts: 93

Website

Why there's no manpages for Arch scripts?

I've moticed that the scripts people have to use during install don't have manpages.

Some or most have -h, but it's quite natural to check for manpage first (after all, if -h
is not implemented, the script could do some unintended mess instead).

That's especially true considering they are bash scripts = more prone to such things.

In particular:

• pacstrap

• genfstab

• arch-chroot

Also, manpage is missing for

• archlinux-java

Just wondering if there's some policy not to document Arch scripts, or what's the deal.

Last edited by MightyPork (2015-08-10 05:51:15)

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Awebb

Member

Registered: 2010-05-06

Posts: 6,286

Re: Why there's no manpages for Arch scripts?

I have never heard of such a policy. You are hereby cordially invited to write a man page and submit it as a bug report. I can only assume, that writing docs is work, and in my experience, people who write good software write horrible docs.

ewaller

Administrator

From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 19,793

Re: Why there's no manpages for Arch scripts?

... and in my experience, people who write good software write horrible docs.

My experience is the opposite.  The best developers produce the best documentation; certainly the more professional developers..  Often it is done almost effortlessly with tools like Doxygen.

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Raynman

Member

Registered: 2011-10-22

Posts: 1,539

Re: Why there's no manpages for Arch scripts?

Basic man pages could be generated from the --help output with help2man (in [extra]). Version has to be specified separately because they don't support --version. Example:

$ help2man -N --version-string=15 genfstab |man -l -

Add a Makefile target and it's "almost effortlessly"