Reading the docs

rakudoc - the Raku pod reader

INTRODUCTION§

Program rakudoc is a command-line-interface (CLI) program that reads Raku pod from installed modules' source code, in contrast to running raku --doc=MODULE programfile which reads Raku pod from the named source file.

Note that rakudoc may not be installed automatically depending upon how you installed Rakudo Raku. To install it use zef:

zef install 'rakudoc:auth<zef:coke>'

SYNOPSIS§

rakudoc [switches] [arguments]

DESCRIPTION§

With no switches or arguments, rakudoc lists its help to $*OUT (stdout). For rakudoc:ver<0.2.5>, this output is:

Usage:
  rakudoc [-d|--doc-sources=<Directories>] [-D|--no-default-docs] <query>
  rakudoc -b|--build-index [-d|--doc-sources=<Directories>] [-D|--no-default-docs]
  rakudoc -V|--version
  rakudoc -h|--help <ARGUMENTS>

    <query>                           Example: 'Map', 'IO::Path.add', '.add'
    -d|--doc-sources=<Directories>    Additional directories to search for documentation
    -D|--no-default-docs              Use only directories in --doc-sources / $RAKUDOC
    -b|--build-index                  Index all documents found in doc source directories

The text output can be captured and converted to other forms if desired.

If you want to use ANSI escape sequences, which will apply boldface and other enhancements when the output is printed to a terminal, you will have to set the environment variable POD_TO_TEXT_ANSI, which is unset by default

export POD_TO_TEXT_ANSI=1

LIMITATIONS§

Currently rakudoc can only extract embedded Raku pod from installed module source files (as listed in a distribution's META6.json file). It is planned to add a feature for rakudoc (in conjunction with META6.json changes) to extract all Raku pod in files included with the installed distribution.