From: greg <eegreg@...>
Date: 2007-06-09T03:35:51+09:00
Subject: Re: DRY Documentation between method and OptionParser

rdoc has a :include tag that will allow you to include another file.
So generate your documentation with a rake task and then include that
file into RDoc

task :foo_doc => "foo.help" do
  sh "rdoc"
end

file "foo.help" => "foo.rb" do
  sh "ruby foo.rb -h >foo.help"
end

$ cat foo.rb
# This is the foo class
#
# Usage:
#
#  :include: foo.help
#

On Jun 7, 12:10 pm, bwv549 <jtpri...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I suspect that lots of folks have run into this very problem:
>
> I have a method.  It has lots of options.  I need a command line
> program that will give users command line access to run the method.  I
> can use OptionParser to parse the command line options into a hash and
> give this hash to my method, like this:
>
> # The method:
> def my_method(arg1, arg2, *opts)
>    ...
> end
>
> # The command line interface:
> opts = {}
> parser = OptionParser.new do |op|
>   op.banner = "usage: progname.rb arg1 arg2 [OPTIONS]"
>   op.on("-f", "--first", Float, "this is the first option") {|v|
> opts[:first] = v }
>   op.on("-s", "--second", Array, "second option is an array") {|v|
> opts[:second] = v }
> end
> parser.parse!
> my_method(ARGV, opts)
>
> I'm trying to figure out the DRY way to document these options, since
> they will all be identical.  OptionParser documentation is in the code
> and that's great, but how do I embed documentation in the method that
> also can end up in OptionParser documentation.  Any ideas?  (This
> situation comes up frequently in my work, or I wouldn't ask)
>
> I've read through this post and it looks helpful (albeit fairly old
> [will it still work]):http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.ruby/browse_thread/thread/b9...
> but I'm not sure how I would apply it to the above situation!
>
> Many Thanks :)