A Helpful Toolkit for Managing PowerShell Help

HelpOut is a Helpful Toolkit for Managing PowerShell Help.

It helps you to:

• Make Markdown Documentation and Wikis For Your Module
• Measure how much documentation is in a script or a function
• Find references within a script.

You can install HelpOut from the gallery, or use it as a GitHub Action.

HelpOut as a GitHub action

To use HelpOut as a GitHub action, simply copy/paste this code into a job in your workflow

   - name: UseHelpOut
     uses: StartAutomating/HelpOut@master

Then, create a *.HelpOut.ps1 file.

This file should import your module and then use Save-MarkdownHelp with -PassThru

Files produced this way will be checked in if there are any changes.

NOTE You must allow repository write permissions to your GitHub Workflow for HelpOut to update files.

Using HelpOut Locally

To use HelpOut locally, start off by installing it from the PowerShell Gallery:

Install-Module HelpOut -Scope CurrentUser -Force

Generating MAML

Get-Module HelpOut | Save-Maml # Will generate MAML files for all of the commands in HelpOut

Generating Markdown /docs

Get-Module HelpOut | Save-MarkdownHelp  # Will generate a /docs folder containing markdown help (interlinked for GitHub Pages)

Generating Wikis

Get-Module HelpOut | Save-MarkdownHelp -Wiki  # Will generate a ../HelpOut.wiki folder containing markdown help (interlinked for wikis)

Using HelpOut as a GitHub Action.

You can use HelpOut as a GitHub Action. Doing so will run whatever .HelpOut.ps1 files exist in your repository. If a -CommitMessage is provided, or attached to any files returned by the .HelpOut.ps1, the changes will be commited.