I’ve been learning Perl lately, and was surprised and pleased to learn that the built-in pod2usage() functionality for converting POD documentation in your program into --help output also automatically supports manpage output. So the Perl programs I’ve been writing all include this as part of their arg-parsing loop:

  pod2usage(-verbose => 1) if /^(-h|--help)$/;
  pod2usage(-verbose => 2) if /^--man$/;

That second line is all it takes to produce a manpage too. Then it’s just a matter of writing the POD documentation for it.

It is admittedly a little unusual to consume a manpage by typing `someprog --man` instead of typing `man someprog`, but it’s very convenient for self-contained scripts.