Flowdock
method

usage

Importance_2
v1_8_7_330 - Show latest stable - 2 notes - Class: RDoc
usage(*args) public

Display usage information from the comment at the top of the file. String arguments identify specific sections of the comment to display. An optional integer first argument specifies the exit status (defaults to 0)

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February 4, 2009
1 thank

RE: Careful when building gems

I found out a way to combine using RDoc::usage when you are building a gem. By ripping out the code from the usage method you can create your own version which opens the correct file.

In my case, I skipped the file reading and just put the usage information in a string and used that directly.

Here is my code:

$usage = %Q{
 = Synopsis
 ...
 = Usage
 ...

 == Options
 ...
 }

 # Shamefully stolen from RDoc#usage. We cannot use RDoc::usage because
 # RubyGems will call this from a wrapper, and #usage is hardcoded to look
 # at the top-level file instead of the current one. I have changed this
 # code to instead just parse a string.
 def usage_and_exit!
   markup = SM::SimpleMarkup.new
   flow_convertor = SM::ToFlow.new

   flow = markup.convert($usage, flow_convertor)

   options = RI::Options.instance
   formatter = options.formatter.new(options, "")
   formatter.display_flow(flow)

   exit(0)
 end

Look in usage_no_exit if you want to rip stuff out. It’s up to you how and if you implement this at all, but it’s a shortcut to use the RDoc code and formatting. Do also consider doing the formatting yourself by hand and just output that string instead.

February 4, 2009
0 thanks

Careful when building gems

If you are building a gem with executables and you think about using RDoc::Usage for facilitating the --help message, think again.

usage and usage_no_exit is hardcoded to look for the initial comment in the top level file being executed, which is normally fine, but when installing a gem, RubyGems will generate a wrapper executable for you, and usage will therefore look in that wrapper file for the comment instead of your own file.

The methods contain too much code to be easily monkey patched too. Hopefully, this will be fixed in a later version.