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. Only 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 a man KIO slave in konqueror. 91 92Multiple values may be given to this configuration variable. Their 93corresponding programs will be tried in the order listed in the 94configuration file. 95 96For example, this configuration: 97 98 [man] 99 viewer = konqueror 100 viewer = woman 101 102will try to use konqueror first. But this may fail (for example if 103DISPLAY is not set) and in that case emacs' woman mode will be tried. 104 105If everything fails the 'man' program will be tried anyway. 106 107man.<tool>.path 108~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 109 110You can explicitly provide a full path to your preferred man viewer by 111setting the configuration variable 'man.<tool>.path'. For example, you 112can configure the absolute path to konqueror by setting 113'man.konqueror.path'. Otherwise, 'git help' assumes the tool is 114available in PATH. 115 116Note about git config --global 117~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 118 119Note that all these configuration variables should probably be set 120using the '--global' flag, for example like this: 121 122------------------------------------------------ 123$ git config --global help.format web 124$ git config --global web.browser firefox 125------------------------------------------------ 126 127as they are probably more user specific than repository specific. 128See linkgit:git-config[1] for more information about this. 129 130Author 131------ 132Written by Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> and the git-list 133<git@vger.kernel.org>. 134 135Documentation 136------------- 137Initial documentation was part of the linkgit:git[7] man page. 138Christian Couder <chriscool@tuxfamily.org> extracted and rewrote it a 139little. Maintenance is done by the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>. 140 141GIT 142--- 143Part of the linkgit:git[7] suite