Shell Script Documentation

Write documentation in comments and render it with templates.

shellman can generate man pages, wiki pages and help text using documentation written in shell scripts comments.

For example:

#!/bin/bash

## \brief Just a demo
## \desc This script actually does nothing.

main() {
  case "$1" in
    ## \option -h, --help
    ## Print this help and exit.
    -h|--help) shellman "$0"; exit 0 ;;
  esac
}

## \usage demo [-h]
main "$@"

Output when calling ./demo -h:

Usage: demo [-h]

This script actually does nothing.

Options:
  -h, --help            Print this help and exit.

You can see more examples in the documentation: https://pawamoy.github.io/shellman/.

Demo

In the demo above we saw the three builtin templates: helptext, manpage and wikipage.

You can use your own templates by specifying them with the --template path:my/template syntax.

You can also write a plugin, see the docs: https://pawamoy.github.io/shellman/plugins.

Installation

pip install shellman

With uv:

uv tool install shellman

Some projects using shellman

shellm — A collection of scripts and libraries built on a core inclusion-system, all installable with basher. Here are a few examples:
- daemon — A library that facilitates the writing of daemonized scripts that consume files in a watched directory.
- debug — A simple script that sets the verbose/dry-run/debug Bash flags before running another script.
- format — Format your output with style and color.
- home — A home for your shell scripts!
- loop — Control the flow of your loops (pause/resume/etc.).

Metadata

Release files for shellman 1.0.2

For a detailed explanation of source distributions (sdists) and built distributions (wheels), please see the package formats documentation.

Source distribution (sdist)

Source distribution for shellman 1.0.2
File	Size	Uploaded
shellman-1.0.2.tar.gz	59.2 kB	Mar 27, 2025	Details

Built distribution (wheel)

Table of built distributions (wheels) for shellman 1.0.2
File	Interpreter	ABI	Platform	Reset
shellman-1.0.2-py3-none-any.whl 30.3 kB Mar 27, 2025	Python 3	none	any	Details

Total release size: 89.5 kB

Release files / shellman-1.0.2.tar.gz

Download URL	shellman-1.0.2.tar.gz
Size	59.2 kB
Tags	Source
SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums	`48cba79d6415c0d013ad4dfd2205ed81b0e468795d1886dcda943ac78eaffd38`
BLAKE2b-256 checksum How to use checksums	`284a0740b503abaccd7f6a81c17401abfc6a8d53627ec5ea2104dee4dd5e268e`
Upload date	Mar 27, 2025
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? What is trusted publishing?	No
Uploaded via	`twine/6.1.0 CPython/3.13.2`

Release files / shellman-1.0.2-py3-none-any.whl

Download URL	shellman-1.0.2-py3-none-any.whl
Size	30.3 kB
Tags	Python 3
SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums	`f8c960fd2d3785e195f86fcd8f110a8d51a950e759d82c14a5af0bd71b918b3c`
BLAKE2b-256 checksum How to use checksums	`0dbb2a3410f11a5ff50be0e98dff5de72d9c2a16982a64129a59fcc9b30c4447`
Upload date	Mar 27, 2025
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? What is trusted publishing?	No
Uploaded via	`twine/6.1.0 CPython/3.13.2`