In many projects to run complex commands or group of commands I use Makefile.
To document it I add a help target.
Here is an exemple for dump and restore commands for PostgreSQL in docker-compose under alias db.
DATE = $(shell date +%d%m%Y)
path ?= .
help: ## show this help
@echo 'usage: make [target] ...'
@echo ''
@echo 'targets:'
@egrep '^(.+)\:\ .*##\ (.+)' ${MAKEFILE_LIST} | sed 's/:.*##/#/' | column -t -c 2 -s '#'
dump: ## dump db, usage 'make dump path=/path/to/dumps'
docker-compose exec --user postgres db pg_dumpall --clean | gzip > $(path)/db_$(DATE).sql.gz
restore: ## restore db from dump file, usage 'make restore dump=dump.sql.gz'
docker-compose stop web
gunzip -c $(dump) | docker exec -i --user postgres `docker-compose ps -q db` psql
docker-compose start web
So make or make help outputs:
usage: make [target] ...
targets:
help show this help
dump dump db, usage `make dump path=/path/to/dumps`
restore restore db from dump file, usage `make restore dump=dump.sql.gz`