NAME

Pod::To::Man - Render Rakudoc as Roff for man

SYNOPSIS

From the command line:

raku --doc=Man your.rakudoc > your.1

From your scripts:

use Pod::To::Man;

say Pod::To::Man.pod2man($=pod);

DESCRIPTION

Pod::To::Man is a Raku module that converts a given Rakudoc (pod6) structure to formatted *roff input, suitable for displaying via the man(1) program.

This module also comes with the rakudoc2man program, which is a front-end to Pod::To::Man that is a more robust alternative to using Pod::To::Man with Raku's builtin --doc renderer.

Methods

pod2man

method pod2man(
    $pod,
    Str  :$program,
    Str  :$section,
    Date :$date,
    Str  :$version,
    Str  :$center,
    Bool :$urls,
)

pod2man converts a given pod structure to *roff, returning the string of formatted *roff.

:$program will be the name pod2man will use as the name of the manpage. By default, pod2man will try to determine the manpage name by looking for the program name specified by any =head1 NAME or =NAME blocks/text. If it cannot determine the name to use from those, it will default to the value of $*PROGRAM.basename.

:$section will be the manual section pod2man will use. See man-pages(7) for more information on the conventions for manpage sections. If $*PROGRAM.basename ends in the '.pm6' or '.rakumod' suffix, the section will be '3rakumod'. Otherwise, defaults to '1'.

:$date is the date to use for the manpage. Defaults to the value of now.Date.

:$version is the version to use for the manpage heading. Defaults to $*RAKU.compiler.gist, which will look something like 'rakudo (20XX.XX)'.

:$center is the text to display in the center of the manpage heading. Defaults to "User Contributed Raku Documentation".

:$urls is a boolean determining whether to generate URLs for 'L<>' links. Defaults to True.

render

method render($pod)

render is basically the same thing as pod2man, but customization is done through environment variables instead of method parameters. This is because it allows the render to be customized when using the --doc option in Raku. If you're using Pod::To::Man in your code directly, you should just use pod2man.

The following environment variables are supported, each corresponding to their respective pod2man parameter.

• RAKUDOC2MAN_PROGRAM

• RAKUDOC2MAN_SECTION

• RAKUDOC2MAN_DATE

• RAKUDOC2MAN_VERSION

• RAKUDOC2MAN_CENTER

• RAKUDOC2MAN_URLS

Most of them accept the same values as their pod2man counterparts. RAKUDOC2MAN_DATE must be given a date string following the YYYY-MM-DD format. RAKUDOC2MAN_URLS must be given a number, with 0 equating to False and any non-zero value being True.

pod2roff

method pod2roff($pod)

This method exists only for compatibility reasons. You should use pod2man instead.

BUGS

Don't be ridiculous...

Report bugs on this project's GitHub page, https://github.com/1-1sam-org/Pod-To-Man.

AUTHORS

• Mike Clarke [email protected]

• Vadim Belman [email protected]

• Samuel Young [email protected]

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

• Copyright © 2019-2022 Mike Clarke

• Copyright © 2022, 2025 Raku Community

• Copyright © 2025 Samuel Young

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the Artistic License 2.0.

SEE ALSO

man(1), roff(1), man(7), man-pages(7)