NAME
git-help - display help information about git
SYNOPSIS
git help [-a|--all|-i|--info|-m|--man|-w|--web] [COMMAND]
DESCRIPTION
With no options and no COMMAND given, the synopsis of the git command
and a list of the most commonly used git commands are printed on the
standard output.
If the option --all or -a is given, then all available commands are
printed on the standard output.
If a git command is named, a manual page for that command is brought
up. The man program is used by default for this purpose, but this can
be overridden by other options or configuration variables.
Note that git --help ... is identical to git help ... because the
former is internally converted into the latter.
OPTIONS
-a, --all
Prints all the available commands on the standard output. This
option supersedes any other option.
-i, --info
Display manual page for the command in the info format. The info
program will be used for that purpose.
-m, --man
Display manual page for the command in the man format. This option
may be used to override a value set in the help.format
configuration variable.
By default the man program will be used to display the manual page,
but the man.viewer configuration variable may be used to choose
other display programs (see below).
-w, --web
Display manual page for the command in the web (HTML) format. A web
browser will be used for that purpose.
The web browser can be specified using the configuration variable
help.browser, or web.browser if the former is not set. If none of
these config variables is set, the git web--browse helper script
(called by git help) will pick a suitable default. See git-web--
browse(1) for more information about this.
CONFIGURATION VARIABLES
help.format
If no command line option is passed, the help.format configuration
variable will be checked. The following values are supported for this
variable; they make git help behave as their corresponding command line
option:
o "man" corresponds to -m|--man,
o "info" corresponds to -i|--info,
o "web" or "html" correspond to -w|--web.
help.browser, web.browser and browser.<tool>.path
The help.browser, web.browser and browser.<tool>.path will also be
checked if the web format is chosen (either by command line option or
configuration variable). See -w|--web in the OPTIONS section above and
git-web--browse(1).
man.viewer
The man.viewer config variable will be checked if the man format is
chosen. The following values are currently supported:
o "man": use the man program as usual,
o "woman": use emacsclient to launch the "woman" mode in emacs (this
only works starting with emacsclient versions 22),
o "konqueror": use kfmclient to open the man page in a new konqueror
tab (see Note about konqueror below).
Values for other tools can be used if there is a corresponding
man.<tool>.cmd configuration entry (see below).
Multiple values may be given to the man.viewer configuration variable.
Their corresponding programs will be tried in the order listed in the
configuration file.
For example, this configuration:
[man]
viewer = konqueror
viewer = woman
will try to use konqueror first. But this may fail (for example if
DISPLAY is not set) and in that case emacs' woman mode will be tried.
If everything fails, or if no viewer is configured, the viewer
specified in the GIT_MAN_VIEWER environment variable will be tried. If
that fails too, the man program will be tried anyway.
man.<tool>.path
You can explicitly provide a full path to your preferred man viewer by
setting the configuration variable man.<tool>.path. For example, you
can configure the absolute path to konqueror by setting
man.konqueror.path. Otherwise, git help assumes the tool is available
in PATH.
man.<tool>.cmd
When the man viewer, specified by the man.viewer configuration
variables, is not among the supported ones, then the corresponding
man.<tool>.cmd configuration variable will be looked up. If this
variable exists then the specified tool will be treated as a custom
command and a shell eval will be used to run the command with the man
page passed as arguments.
Note about konqueror
When konqueror is specified in the man.viewer configuration variable,
we launch kfmclient to try to open the man page on an already opened
konqueror in a new tab if possible.
For consistency, we also try such a trick if man.konqueror.path is set
to something like A_PATH_TO/konqueror. That means we will try to launch
A_PATH_TO/kfmclient instead.
If you really want to use konqueror, then you can use something like
the following:
[man]
viewer = konq
[man "konq"]
cmd = A_PATH_TO/konqueror
Note about git config --global
Note that all these configuration variables should probably be set
using the --global flag, for example like this:
$ git config --global help.format web
$ git config --global web.browser firefox
as they are probably more user specific than repository specific. See
git-config(1) for more information about this.
AUTHOR
Written by Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com[1]> and the git-list
<git@vger.kernel.org[2]>.
DOCUMENTATION
Initial documentation was part of the git(1) man page. Christian Couder
<chriscool@tuxfamily.org[3]> extracted and rewrote it a little.
Maintenance is done by the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org[2]>.
GIT
Part of the git(1) suite
NOTES
1. gitster@pobox.com
mailto:gitster@pobox.com
2. git@vger.kernel.org
mailto:git@vger.kernel.org
3. chriscool@tuxfamily.org
mailto:chriscool@tuxfamily.org