manrs

A command-line viewer for documentation generated by rustdoc. Modernized fork of rusty-man.

Example Usage

Look up any item by name (manrs finds your project's target/doc automatically):

$ manrs std::collections::HashMap
$ manrs serde::Serialize
$ manrs anyhow::Error

Partial names work too:

$ manrs HashMap

No keyword? Get an interactive TUI crate picker. Run manrs with no arguments inside any Cargo project — it will run cargo doc if needed, then open a full-screen picker where you can type to filter and press Enter to open:

$ manrs

The picker shows all available crates. Type any substring to narrow the list, use ↑/↓ to navigate, and press Enter to open.

If there are multiple matches for a keyword, manrs prompts you to pick one in the same way:

$ manrs u8

To read docs from a non-default location use -s/--source:

$ manrs --source path/to/target/doc io::Error

For all options:

$ manrs --help

Viewers

Select a viewer with --viewer:

• plain — plain text output, no formatting. Default for non-interactive use (pipes, scripts).
• rich — formatted output with ANSI colors and syntax highlighting.
• tui — interactive terminal UI with keyboard navigation. Default on interactive terminals.

$ manrs --viewer rich std::vec::Vec   # force rich text
$ manrs --viewer plain std::vec::Vec  # force plain text

TUI key bindings

Key	Action
j / k	Scroll down / up one line
J / K	Jump to next / previous link (highlighted in blue when focused)
Ctrl-F / Ctrl-B	Page down / up
PageDown / PageUp	Page down / up
g / G	Jump to top / bottom
Enter	Follow focused link
o	Open any item by name
Backspace	Go back
q	Quit

TUI module page layout

Each module or item page is structured as:

1. LINKS — navigable doc links extracted from the description (e.g. → tower::Service), shown at the top so the first j keypress reaches them immediately.
2. SYNOPSIS — the item's type signature.
3. DESCRIPTION — full documentation text with rich formatting:
   • Linked identifiers (e.g. axum, tower::Service) rendered in cyan + underline.
   • Inline code rendered in light yellow.
   • Code blocks with full syntax highlighting (via syntect).
   • Bold, italic, and emphasis text styled accordingly.
4. Member sections — structs, functions, traits, etc., each heading a focusable link.

Installation

From source

$ git clone https://github.com/Feeco-Li/manrs
$ cd manrs
$ cargo install --path .

System docs

To browse standard library docs without running cargo doc first, install the Rust documentation component:

$ rustup component add rust-docs
$ manrs std::fs::File

Editor Integration

Neovim / Vim

Set manrs as the keyword lookup program for Rust files:

autocmd FileType rust setlocal keywordprg=manrs

Then press K over any identifier to open its documentation.

License

MIT. Originally based on rusty-man by Robin Krahl.