1git-help(1) 2=========== 3 4NAME 5---- 6git-help - display help information about git 7 8SYNOPSIS 9-------- 10'git help' [-a|--all|-i|--info|-m|--man|-w|--web] [COMMAND] 11 12DESCRIPTION 13----------- 14 15With no options and no COMMAND given, the synopsis of the 'git' 16command and a list of the most commonly used git commands are printed 17on the standard output. 18 19If the option '--all' or '-a' is given, then all available commands are 20printed on the standard output. 21 22If a git command is named, a manual page for that command is brought 23up. The 'man' program is used by default for this purpose, but this 24can be overridden by other options or configuration variables. 25 26Note that 'git --help ...' is identical as 'git help ...' because the 27former is internally converted into the latter. 28 29OPTIONS 30------- 31-a|--all:: 32 Prints all the available commands on the standard output. This 33 option supersedes any other option. 34 35-i|--info:: 36 Display manual page for the command in the 'info' format. The 37 'info' program will be used for that purpose. 38 39-m|--man:: 40 Display manual page for the command in the 'man' format. This 41 option may be used to override a value set in the 42 'help.format' configuration variable. 43+ 44By default the 'man' program will be used to display the manual page, 45but the 'man.viewer' configuration variable may be used to choose 46other display programs (see below). 47 48-w|--web:: 49 Display manual page for the command in the 'web' (HTML) 50 format. A web browser will be used for that purpose. 51+ 52The web browser can be specified using the configuration variable 53'help.browser', or 'web.browser' if the former is not set. If none of 54these config variables is set, the 'git-web--browse' helper script 55(called by 'git-help') will pick a suitable default. See 56linkgit:git-web--browse[1] for more information about this. 57 58CONFIGURATION VARIABLES 59----------------------- 60 61help.format 62~~~~~~~~~~~ 63 64If no command line option is passed, the 'help.format' configuration 65variable will be checked. The following values are supported for this 66variable; they make 'git-help' behave as their corresponding command 67line option: 68 69* "man" corresponds to '-m|--man', 70* "info" corresponds to '-i|--info', 71* "web" or "html" correspond to '-w|--web'. 72 73help.browser, web.browser and browser.<tool>.path 74~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 75 76The 'help.browser', 'web.browser' and 'browser.<tool>.path' will also 77be checked if the 'web' format is chosen (either by command line 78option or configuration variable). See '-w|--web' in the OPTIONS 79section above and linkgit:git-web--browse[1]. 80 81man.viewer 82~~~~~~~~~~ 83 84The 'man.viewer' config variable will be checked if the 'man' format 85is chosen. The following values are currently supported: 86 87* "man": use the 'man' program as usual, 88* "woman": use 'emacsclient' to launch the "woman" mode in emacs 89(this only works starting with emacsclient versions 22), 90* "konqueror": use 'kfmclient' to open the man page in a new konqueror 91tab (see 'Note about konqueror' below). 92 93Values for other tools can be used if there is a corresponding 94'man.<tool>.cmd' configuration entry (see below). 95 96Multiple values may be given to the 'man.viewer' configuration 97variable. Their corresponding programs will be tried in the order 98listed in the configuration file. 99 100For example, this configuration: 101 102------------------------------------------------ 103 [man] 104 viewer = konqueror 105 viewer = woman 106------------------------------------------------ 107 108will try to use konqueror first. But this may fail (for example if 109DISPLAY is not set) and in that case emacs' woman mode will be tried. 110 111If everything fails the 'man' program will be tried anyway. 112 113man.<tool>.path 114~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 115 116You can explicitly provide a full path to your preferred man viewer by 117setting the configuration variable 'man.<tool>.path'. For example, you 118can configure the absolute path to konqueror by setting 119'man.konqueror.path'. Otherwise, 'git help' assumes the tool is 120available in PATH. 121 122man.<tool>.cmd 123~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 124 125When the man viewer, specified by the 'man.viewer' configuration 126variables, is not among the supported ones, then the corresponding 127'man.<tool>.cmd' configuration variable will be looked up. If this 128variable exists then the specified tool will be treated as a custom 129command and a shell eval will be used to run the command with the man 130page passed as arguments. 131 132Note about konqueror 133~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 134 135When 'konqueror' is specified in the 'man.viewer' configuration 136variable, we launch 'kfmclient' to try to open the man page on an 137already opened konqueror in a new tab if possible. 138 139For consistency, we also try such a trick if 'man.konqueror.path' is 140set to something like 'A_PATH_TO/konqueror'. That means we will try to 141launch 'A_PATH_TO/kfmclient' instead. 142 143If you really want to use 'konqueror', then you can use something like 144the following: 145 146------------------------------------------------ 147 [man] 148 viewer = konq 149 150 [man "konq"] 151 cmd = A_PATH_TO/konqueror 152------------------------------------------------ 153 154Note about git config --global 155~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 156 157Note that all these configuration variables should probably be set 158using the '--global' flag, for example like this: 159 160------------------------------------------------ 161$ git config --global help.format web 162$ git config --global web.browser firefox 163------------------------------------------------ 164 165as they are probably more user specific than repository specific. 166See linkgit:git-config[1] for more information about this. 167 168Author 169------ 170Written by Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> and the git-list 171<git@vger.kernel.org>. 172 173Documentation 174------------- 175Initial documentation was part of the linkgit:git[7] man page. 176Christian Couder <chriscool@tuxfamily.org> extracted and rewrote it a 177little. Maintenance is done by the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>. 178 179GIT 180--- 181Part of the linkgit:git[7] suite