Simple (and crippled) keyword-search in Fossil-help

What is this?

a Bash-script that performs a search through Fossil command-options.

This may be useful if you use Fossil, and less useful otherwise.

Why?

Fossil offers help per command/webpage using fossil help <command>, but there is no real way to do keyword-search spanning help-pages.

(However, to display all available help in one single page, use the /test-all-help web-page on a running Fossil-instance, e.g. http://fossil-scm.org/index.html/test-all-help. Note that this is a so-called test-command, and thus subject to change/removal.)

What now?

Please read the script-header for more info, and use at will. I gave it the unhappy name 'fapropos' now; feel free to rename it :-)

    #!/usr/bin/bash
        
        
        
    # WHAT IS THIS?
    #
    #     This script performs a search through Fossil command-options.
    #
    # CAVEAT
    #
    #     The method to filter out options from the other text is feeble - 
    #     only lines from help-pages beginning with whitespace are
    #     considered. This works reasonably well. Obviously, this tool is 
    #     meant as a supplement to 'fossil help' only.
    # 
    # SYNTAX
    #
    #     fapropos <needle> [<whence>]
    #
    #         <needle>: the string to search for
    #
    #         <whence> an optional command-set specifier, e.g. "-t" for 
    #                  test-commands, or "-w" for WWW-commands. If not
    #                  given, defaults to "-a" ("all commands"). 
        
        
        
    F=fossil
        
    needle=$1
    shift
    [ -n "$needle" ]  ||  { echo "Use a search-string"; exit; }
        
    whence=$*
    [ -n "$whence" ]  ||  whence="-a"
        
        
        
    cmds=$( $F help $whence | xargs echo )
        
    for c in $cmds; do 
        
        opts=$( $F help $c | grep '^ ' | grep -- "$needle" )
        
        if [ -n "$opts" ]; then
            echo $c:
            echo "$opts" | sed 's/^ */    /'
            echo
        fi
    done