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Re: GNU utility to generate --help
From: |
Karl Berry |
Subject: |
Re: GNU utility to generate --help |
Date: |
Sat, 7 Jan 2006 16:27:39 -0600 |
Hi Paulo,
information and it seems like there is a 'template' for this --help
The template, such as it is, is described in the GNU coding standards.
http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/standards.html#Command_002dLine-Interfaces
You can figure out the common formatting that most of us follow in
practice just by looking at the examples from coreutils, texinfo, etc.
(Don't look at diffutils, though. :) If any questions, feel free to ask.
Is there any script/software to generate --help replies and put
them in my C++ software?
Not exactly (that I know of). There are some extended getopt-like
libraries which will let you define a help string with each option,
namely GNU autogen and (I think) GNU gengetopt. (I don't know about C++
support.) This has obvious advantages, although I personally just write
the help message as a string constant (more or less).
On a related note, once a --help message is written, you can generate
the same info in man page format using GNU help2man. This is useful for
a number of GNU packages.
Best regards,
Karl