Release Notes for HelpMessage version/0.2

New features
  • helpmselect: new script that removes sections from a HelpMessage.

  • All the scripts accept at most a single file argument now.

  • helpm2pod, helpm2man: attempt to guess the manual name and the manual section from the filename or from a given specification.

  • helpm2pod: support verbatim blocks inside list descriptions; the manual helpmessage(5) would already imply that this was supported.

  • Let getopt(1) parse the options of the scripts that have more than a single version option; this allows in general to intermix options and non options; gitparseopt2helpm was the only script modified.

Fixes and Improvements
  • Portability to many more AWK implementations (nawk from Solaris or Heirloom, mawk and the original AWK should be supported).

  • Run awk from sh in all the scripts to avoid hardcoding the awk path.

  • Be strict about the usage: fail when unrecognized options or extraneous arguments are given.

  • Make sure that a filename cannot be interpreted as an assignment by awk.

  • helpm2pod: properly escape lines containing single quotes when passing them on shell command lines.

  • helpm2pod: do add a required blank line after a verbatim block.

  • helpm2pod: do not add blank lines when the input already has them.

  • helpm2text: recognize a blank header to avoid adding an unrequired blank line before the first section.

Documentation changes
  • Document the single letter options; they are required when getopt(1) is not the extended GNU version.

  • List getopt as a dependency.

  • Add manual sections about the exit status.

Release Notes for HelpMessage version/0.1

This is the first release of HelpMessage, a set of portable scripts to convert a special format named HelpMessage to POD, man or text.

The included scripts are helpm2pod, helpm2man, helpm2text, gitparseopt2helpm and helpm4sh; the format is defined in the manual page helpmessage(5).