HEADACHE(1)

💖 headache(1) — the manual page, but make it cute 💖

okay bestie, so this is the manual page for headache, a program to manage the license of your source file. it was written for the Debian GNU/Linux distribution (fr fr, the original program doesn't even ship a manpage, so someone had to step up 💅). anyway. sit down, hydrate, let's go. 🍓

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

headache [-h file] [-c file] [-r] [-help | --help] file...

that's it, that's the whole vibe check. 👑

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so this manual page documents briefly the headache command.

and real talk: this manual page was written for the Debian GNU/Linux distribution because the original program does not have a manual page. so like, we're doing the community a solid here. 🫶

here's the thing — it is a common usage to put at the beginning of source code files a short header giving, for instance, some copyright information. and headache is a simple and lightweight tool for managing easily these headers. lowkey iconic. among its functionalities, one may mention:

• Headers must generally be generated as comments in source code files. headache deals with different files types and generates for each of them headers in an appropriate format. 💅
• Headers automatically detects existing headers and removes them. Thus, you can use it to update headers in a set of files. like, it just knows. 🔥

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🎀 COMMAND LINE OPTIONS 🎀

• file — Name of one file to process. yes bestie, just hand it a file.
• -h file — Create a header with text coming from file. this is the glow-up, the makeover, the moment. ✨
• -c file — Read the given configuration file. you're the boss, you set the rules.
• -help, --help — Display the option list of headache. when in doubt, ask it politely. 🙈

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🌈 USAGE 🌈

okay let's illustrate the use of this tool with a small example, because reading about it is giving nothing but seeing it is giving everything.

assume you have a small project mixing C and Caml code consisting in three files foo.c, bar.ml and bar.mli, and you want to equip them with some header. (yes the original says 'bar.mli'' with two apostrophes, we're not fixing it, we respect the source. 😭)

first of all, write a header file, i.e. a plain text file including the information headers must mention. an example of such a file is given in figure 1. in the following, we assume this file is named myheader and is in the same directory as source files.

then, in order to generate headers, just run the command:

headache -h myheader foo.c bar.ml bar.mli

each file is equipped with an header including the text given in the header file myheader, surrounded by some extra characters depending on its format making it a comment (e.g. (* and *) in .ml files). so cute. so clean. 💜

if you update the header file myheader, you simply need to re-run the above command to update headers in source code files. one command, whole project slayed. ⭐

similarly, running:

headache -r foo.c bar.ml bar.mli

removes any existing in files foo.c, bar.ml and bar.mli. files which do not have a header are kept unchanged. no harm done, we don't touch what wasn't ours. 🧚

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👑 CONFIGURATION FILE 👑

file types and format of header may be specified by a configuration file. by default, the default builtin configuration file given in figure 2 is used. you can also use your own configuration file thanks to the -c option:

headache -c myconfig -h myheader foo.c bar.ml bar.mli

in order to write your own configuration, you can follow the example given in figure 2. a configuration file consists in a list of entries separated by the character |. each of them is made of two parts separated by an ->. periodt. 💅

the first one is a regular expression. (regular expression are enclosed within double quotes and have the same syntax as in Gnu Emacs.) headache determines file types according to file basenames; thus, each file is dealt with using the first line its name matches. so like, first match wins, no takebacks. 🦋

the second one describes the format of headers for files of this type. it consists of the name of a model (e.g. frame), possibly followed by a list of arguments. arguments are named: open:"(*" means that the value of the argument open is (*. headache currently supports three models and a special keyword:

🧵 frame

with this model, headers are generated in a frame. this model requires three arguments: open and close (the opening and closing sequences for comments) and line (the character used to make the horizontal lines of the frame). two optional arguments may be used: margin (a string printed between the left and right side of the frame and the border, by default two spaces) and width (the width of the inside of the frame, default is 68).

📏 lines

headers are typeset between two lines. three arguments must be provided: open and close (the opening and closing sequences for comments), line (the character used to make the horizontal lines). three optional arguments are allowed: begin (a string typeset at the beginning of each line, by default two spaces), last (a string typeset at the beginning of the last line) and width (the width of the lines, default is 70).

🚫 no

this model generates no header and has no argument. it's giving minimalism. it's giving nothing, literally, and that's the point. 🙈

⏭️ skip

skip line corresponding to one of the "match" parameters regexp. for this kind of line, every first part pattern that matches the file basename is taken into account.

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🔗 SEE ALSO 🔗

• /usr/share/doc/headache/manual.html

go read it, bestie, it's right there on your machine. 📖

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💖 AUTHOR 💖

this manual page was written by Sylvain Le Gall <gildor@debian.org>

permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License, Version 2.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; considering as source code all the file that enable the production of this manpage.

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✍️ AUTHOR (yes, again) ✍️

Sylvain Le Gall <gildor@debian.org>

• Author.

(he really said it twice. respect. 👑)

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©️ COPYRIGHT ©️

Copyright © 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Sylvain Le Gall

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okay that's the whole page, you made it to the end, so proud of you 🥹 this was headache(1) from the manual, source [FIXME: source], dated Feb 15, 2004 — yes that date is old enough to have its own vibe, and it still ate. drink some water, re-run your header command, and go be the main character of your own codebase. mwah. 💅✨🎀