← Prohelp

Shell help wrapper

Why Prohelp extends help to PATH binaries — and how to configure it after install.

Incomplete package install? If prohelp is on your PATH but help tar still only knows shell builtins, the package installer skipped the shell wrapper. That is a packaging bug — tell the maintainer, and you can file upstream details at openshellorg/prohelp issues.

Why

Shell help documents the shell. man / info document programs. Historically help never became the front door for PATH tools. Prohelp installs a shell function named help that keeps builtin help for builtins and routes everything else through prohelp (and man/info / help.sdl / help.md / help.adoc when available).

Dropping help.exe on PATH does not override bash/zsh builtins. A function does. cmd.exe is not supported.

Setup

prohelp wrapper install
prohelp wrapper status
# reload the shell
help tar
help printf

What packages must do

  1. Put prohelp on PATH.
  2. Run prohelp wrapper install (or ship equivalent rc snippets) for interactive shells.
  3. Treat “binary only, no wrapper” as an incomplete install.

Escape hatches

Also available in-terminal: prohelp ? shell-help · schema authoring: prohelp ? meta · examples help.md / help.adoc

Repository · Issues