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atmos.help

The atmos.help function runs atmos help through the current Atmos executable. Use it to capture the help text of Atmos or of one of its commands, for example to include it in a generated document.

Usage​

atmos.help(
    *positionals,
    flags = {},
    args = [],
    working_directory = ...,
    env = ...,
    output = "stream",
    check = True,
)

Subcommands​

The help command has no subcommands of its own. Pass the path of the command you want help for as strings. The call atmos.help() prints the top-level help, and atmos.help("terraform", "plan") runs atmos help terraform plan and prints the help for atmos terraform plan.

The command accepts the standard --help flag and the global flags that every Atmos command accepts. See the atmos help command reference for details.

Arguments​

*positionals

(Optional) Strings placed on the command line right after help, in order: the path of the command to describe. Every value must be a string.

flags

(Optional) A dictionary of command-line options; see flag translation. A bare key such as "no-color" becomes --no-color.

args
(Optional) A list or tuple of strings appended after the flags.
working_directory, env, output, check

(Optional) See atmos.run for process options and defaults.

Options other than the positionals are keyword-only.

Returns​

A result with stdout, stderr, and exit_code. See atmos.run for output and error behavior.

Examples​

Capture the help text of a command​

help_text = atmos.help("list", output = "capture")
print(help_text.stdout)

Check the help for several commands​

for name in ["terraform", "helmfile", "packer"]:
    page = atmos.help(name, output = "capture")
    print(name + ": " + str(len(page.stdout)) + " characters of help")
note

The help text is written for people. When the script runs without a terminal, the call prints plain help text to standard output, which makes it practical for capturing documentation. Scripts that need structured data should call the list or describe commands with format set to json instead.

Related​