mix help (Mix v1.19.0)

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Prints documentation for tasks, aliases, modules, and applications.

Examples

Without an explicit argument, this task lists tasks/aliases:

$ mix help                  - prints all aliases, tasks and their short descriptions
$ mix help --search PATTERN - prints all tasks and aliases that contain PATTERN in the name
$ mix help --names          - prints all task names and aliases (useful for autocompletion)
$ mix help --aliases        - prints all aliases

You can access documentation for a given task/alias:

$ mix help TASK/ALIAS       - prints full docs for the given task/alias

But also for modules, functions, and applications:

$ mix help MODULE           - prints the definition for the given module
$ mix help MODULE.FUN       - prints the definition for the given module+function
$ mix help app:APP          - prints a summary of all public modules in application

Colors

When possible, mix help is going to use coloring for formatting the help information. The formatting can be customized by configuring the Mix application either inside your project (in config/config.exs) or by using the local config (in ~/.mix/config.exs).

For example, to disable color, one may use the configuration:

[mix: [colors: [enabled: false]]]

The available color options are:

  • :enabled - shows ANSI formatting (defaults to IO.ANSI.enabled?/0)
  • :doc_code - the attributes for code blocks (cyan, bright)
  • :doc_inline_code - inline code (cyan)
  • :doc_headings - h1 and h2 (yellow, bright)
  • :doc_title - the overall heading for the output (reverse, yellow, bright)
  • :doc_bold - (bright)
  • :doc_underline - (underline)