help2man ☆
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Description:
Automatically generate simple man pages
Type: Formula  |  Latest Version: 1.49.3@4  |  Tracked Since: Nov 3, 2025
Links: Homepage  |  formulae.brew.sh
Category: Developer tools
Tags: documentation man-pages cli gnu automation
Install: brew install help2man
About:
help2man is a tool that generates manual pages from executable programs, typically following the GNU coding standards. It creates simple man pages by parsing the output of commands like --help and --version, providing a basic documentation foundation. This utility helps developers maintain documentation with minimal effort, ensuring command-line tools have accessible manual entries.
Key Features:
  • Automatically generates man pages from --help and --version output
  • Supports internationalization with gettext for translated man pages
  • Lightweight and easy to integrate into build processes
  • Generates troff-formatted output compatible with standard man viewers
Use Cases:
  • Creating initial man pages for new command-line utilities
  • Generating documentation for software packages during build
  • Maintaining up-to-date man pages for rapidly evolving tools
Alternatives:
  • ronn – Converts Markdown to roff, but requires manual content creation unlike help2man's automation
  • pandoc – General-purpose document converter, more complex and not specialized for auto-generating from --help output
Version History
Detected Version Rev Change Commit
Dec 29, 2025 3:55pm 4 REVISION_ONLY d56af930
Nov 3, 2025 12:34pm 3 VERSION_BUMP 6f78958a
Oct 22, 2024 3:00am 3 VERSION_BUMP dcfb5c2e
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