-GetOptions($opt, qw(quiet|q)) or die "bad command-line args\n$usage";
-my @ibxs = PublicInbox::Admin::resolve_inboxes(\@ARGV) or die $usage;
+my $help = <<EOF; # the following should fit w/o scrolling in 80x24 term:
+Usage: $usage
+
+ Compact Xapian DBs in an inbox
+
+options:
+
+ --all index all configured inboxes
+ --jobs=NUM control parallelization
+
+See public-inbox-compact(1) man page for full documentation.
+EOF
+GetOptions($opt, qw(all help|?),
+ # compact options:
+ qw(jobs|j=i quiet|q blocksize|b=s no-full|n fuller|F),
+) or die "bad command-line args\n$usage\n";
+if ($opt->{help}) { print $help; exit 0 };
+
+require PublicInbox::Admin;
+PublicInbox::Admin::require_or_die('-index');
+PublicInbox::Admin::progress_prepare($opt);
+
+require PublicInbox::InboxWritable;
+require PublicInbox::Xapcmd;
+my @ibxs = PublicInbox::Admin::resolve_inboxes(\@ARGV, $opt);
+unless (@ibxs) { print STDERR "Usage: $usage\n"; exit 1 }