explainshell.com - match command-line arguments to their help text
explainshell is a tool (with a web interface) capable of parsing man pages, extracting options and
explain a given command-line by matching each argument to the relevant help text in the man page.
How?
explainshell is built from the following components:
- man page reader which converts a given man page from raw format to html (manpage.py)
- classifier which goes through every paragraph in the man page and classifies
it as contains options or not (algo/classifier.py) - an options extractor that scans classified paragraphs and looks for options (options.py)
- a storage backend that saves processed man pages to mongodb (store.py)
- a matcher that walks the command's AST (parsed by bashlex) and contextually matches each node
to the relevant help text (matcher.py)
When querying explainshell, it:
- parses the query into an AST
- visits interesting nodes in the AST, such as:
- command nodes - these nodes represent a simple command
- shell related nodes - these nodes represent something the shell
interprets such as ', ', '&&'
- for every command node we check if we know how to explain the current program,
and then go through the rest of the tokens, trying to match each one to the
list of known options - returns a list of matches that are rendered with Flask
TODO file
Missing man pages
Right now explainshell.com contains the entire archive of Ubuntu. It's not
possible to directly add a missing man page to the live site (it might be in the future). Instead, submit a link here
and I'll add it.
Running explainshell locally
To setup a working environment that lets you run the web interface locally, you'll need to:
$ pip install -r requirements.txt
# load classifier data, needs a mongodb
$ mongorestore dump/explainshell && mongorestore -d explainshell_tests dump/explainshell
$ make tests
..............................................................................
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 79 tests in 3.847s
OK
Processing a man page
Use the manager to parse and save a gzipped man page in raw format:
$ PYTHONPATH=. python explainshell/manager.py --log info manpages/1/echo.1.gz
INFO:explainshell.store:creating store, db = 'explainshell_tests', host = 'mongodb://localhost'
INFO:explainshell.algo.classifier:train on 994 instances
INFO:explainshell.manager:handling manpage echo (from /tmp/es/manpages/1/echo.1.gz)
INFO:explainshell.store:looking up manpage in mapping with src 'echo'
INFO:explainshell.manpage:executing '/tmp/es/tools/w3mman2html.cgi local=%2Ftmp%2Fes%2Fmanpages%2F1%2Fecho.1.gz'
INFO:explainshell.algo.classifier:classified <paragraph 3, DESCRIPTION: '-n do not output the trailing newlin'> (0.991381) as an option paragraph
INFO:explainshell.algo.classifier:classified <paragraph 4, DESCRIPTION: '-e enable interpretation of backslash escape'> (0.996904) as an option paragraph
INFO:explainshell.algo.classifier:classified <paragraph 5, DESCRIPTION: '-E disable interpretation of backslash escapes (default'> (0.998640) as an option paragraph
INFO:explainshell.algo.classifier:classified <paragraph 6, DESCRIPTION: '--help display this help and exi'> (0.999215) as an option paragraph
INFO:explainshell.algo.classifier:classified <paragraph 7, DESCRIPTION: '--version'> (0.999993) as an option paragraph
INFO:explainshell.store:inserting mapping (alias) echo -> echo (52207a1fa9b52e42fb59df36) with score 10
successfully added echo
Start up a local web server:
$ make serve
python runserver.py
* Running on http://127.0.0.1:5000/
* Restarting with reloader
Start up a local web server with docker
# Build docker web and db containers
$ docker-compose build
$ docker-compose up
# Copy dump over to container for than to import it.
$ docker cp dump/ explainshell_db_1:/tmp/dump
# Import classifiers
$ docker exec explainshell_db_1 mongorestore /tmp/dump
# Import a man page
$ docker exec explainshell_web_1 bash -c "PYTHONPATH=. python explainshell/manager.py --log info /usr/share/man/man1/grep.1.gz"
...
successfully added grep.1.gz
# Open browser at port 5000
$ open http://localhost:5000
# Restore test db to run tests
$ docker exec explainshell_db_1 mongorestore -d explainshell_tests /tmp/dump/explainshell
$ docker exec explainshell_web_1 make tests
..............................................................................
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 79 tests in 3.847s
OK