Documentation / git-help.txton commit merge-recursive --renormalize (7610fa5)
   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 to `git help ...` because the
  27former is internally converted into the latter.
  28
  29OPTIONS
  30-------
  31-a::
  32--all::
  33        Prints all the available commands on the standard output. This
  34        option supersedes any other option.
  35
  36-i::
  37--info::
  38        Display manual page for the command in the 'info' format. The
  39        'info' program will be used for that purpose.
  40
  41-m::
  42--man::
  43        Display manual page for the command in the 'man' format. This
  44        option may be used to override a value set in the
  45        'help.format' configuration variable.
  46+
  47By default the 'man' program will be used to display the manual page,
  48but the 'man.viewer' configuration variable may be used to choose
  49other display programs (see below).
  50
  51-w::
  52--web::
  53        Display manual page for the command in the 'web' (HTML)
  54        format. A web browser will be used for that purpose.
  55+
  56The web browser can be specified using the configuration variable
  57'help.browser', or 'web.browser' if the former is not set. If none of
  58these config variables is set, the 'git web--browse' helper script
  59(called by 'git help') will pick a suitable default. See
  60linkgit:git-web--browse[1] for more information about this.
  61
  62CONFIGURATION VARIABLES
  63-----------------------
  64
  65help.format
  66~~~~~~~~~~~
  67
  68If no command line option is passed, the 'help.format' configuration
  69variable will be checked. The following values are supported for this
  70variable; they make 'git help' behave as their corresponding command
  71line option:
  72
  73* "man" corresponds to '-m|--man',
  74* "info" corresponds to '-i|--info',
  75* "web" or "html" correspond to '-w|--web'.
  76
  77help.browser, web.browser and browser.<tool>.path
  78~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  79
  80The 'help.browser', 'web.browser' and 'browser.<tool>.path' will also
  81be checked if the 'web' format is chosen (either by command line
  82option or configuration variable). See '-w|--web' in the OPTIONS
  83section above and linkgit:git-web--browse[1].
  84
  85man.viewer
  86~~~~~~~~~~
  87
  88The 'man.viewer' config variable will be checked if the 'man' format
  89is chosen. The following values are currently supported:
  90
  91* "man": use the 'man' program as usual,
  92* "woman": use 'emacsclient' to launch the "woman" mode in emacs
  93(this only works starting with emacsclient versions 22),
  94* "konqueror": use 'kfmclient' to open the man page in a new konqueror
  95tab (see 'Note about konqueror' below).
  96
  97Values for other tools can be used if there is a corresponding
  98'man.<tool>.cmd' configuration entry (see below).
  99
 100Multiple values may be given to the 'man.viewer' configuration
 101variable. Their corresponding programs will be tried in the order
 102listed in the configuration file.
 103
 104For example, this configuration:
 105
 106------------------------------------------------
 107        [man]
 108                viewer = konqueror
 109                viewer = woman
 110------------------------------------------------
 111
 112will try to use konqueror first. But this may fail (for example if
 113DISPLAY is not set) and in that case emacs' woman mode will be tried.
 114
 115If everything fails, or if no viewer is configured, the viewer specified
 116in the GIT_MAN_VIEWER environment variable will be tried.  If that
 117fails too, the 'man' program will be tried anyway.
 118
 119man.<tool>.path
 120~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 121
 122You can explicitly provide a full path to your preferred man viewer by
 123setting the configuration variable 'man.<tool>.path'. For example, you
 124can configure the absolute path to konqueror by setting
 125'man.konqueror.path'. Otherwise, 'git help' assumes the tool is
 126available in PATH.
 127
 128man.<tool>.cmd
 129~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 130
 131When the man viewer, specified by the 'man.viewer' configuration
 132variables, is not among the supported ones, then the corresponding
 133'man.<tool>.cmd' configuration variable will be looked up. If this
 134variable exists then the specified tool will be treated as a custom
 135command and a shell eval will be used to run the command with the man
 136page passed as arguments.
 137
 138Note about konqueror
 139~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 140
 141When 'konqueror' is specified in the 'man.viewer' configuration
 142variable, we launch 'kfmclient' to try to open the man page on an
 143already opened konqueror in a new tab if possible.
 144
 145For consistency, we also try such a trick if 'man.konqueror.path' is
 146set to something like 'A_PATH_TO/konqueror'. That means we will try to
 147launch 'A_PATH_TO/kfmclient' instead.
 148
 149If you really want to use 'konqueror', then you can use something like
 150the following:
 151
 152------------------------------------------------
 153        [man]
 154                viewer = konq
 155
 156        [man "konq"]
 157                cmd = A_PATH_TO/konqueror
 158------------------------------------------------
 159
 160Note about git config --global
 161~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 162
 163Note that all these configuration variables should probably be set
 164using the '--global' flag, for example like this:
 165
 166------------------------------------------------
 167$ git config --global help.format web
 168$ git config --global web.browser firefox
 169------------------------------------------------
 170
 171as they are probably more user specific than repository specific.
 172See linkgit:git-config[1] for more information about this.
 173
 174Author
 175------
 176Written by Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> and the git-list
 177<git@vger.kernel.org>.
 178
 179Documentation
 180-------------
 181Initial documentation was part of the linkgit:git[1] man page.
 182Christian Couder <chriscool@tuxfamily.org> extracted and rewrote it a
 183little. Maintenance is done by the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>.
 184
 185GIT
 186---
 187Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite