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