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{litdd}browse' helper script 59(called by 'git help') will pick a suitable default. See 60linkgit:git-web{litdd}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{litdd}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