Documentation / git-help.txton commit Merge branch 'master' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/gitk/gitk (f85fd3f)
   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        Use the 'info' program to display the manual page, instead of
  37        the 'man' program that is used by default.
  38
  39-m|--man::
  40        Use the 'man' program to display the manual page. This may be
  41        used to override a value set in the 'help.format'
  42        configuration variable.
  43
  44-w|--web::
  45        Use a web browser to display the HTML manual page, instead of
  46        the 'man' program that is used by default.
  47+
  48The web browser can be specified using the configuration variable
  49'help.browser', or 'web.browser' if the former is not set. If none of
  50these config variables is set, the 'git-help--browse' helper script
  51(called by 'git-help') will pick a suitable default.
  52+
  53You can explicitly provide a full path to your preferred browser by
  54setting the configuration variable 'browser.<tool>.path'. For example,
  55you can configure the absolute path to firefox by setting
  56'browser.firefox.path'. Otherwise, 'git-help--browse' assumes the tool
  57is available in PATH.
  58+
  59Note that the script tries, as much as possible, to display the HTML
  60page in a new tab on an already opened browser.
  61
  62CONFIGURATION VARIABLES
  63-----------------------
  64
  65If no command line option is passed, the 'help.format' configuration
  66variable will be checked. The following values are supported for this
  67variable; they make 'git-help' behave as their corresponding command
  68line option:
  69
  70* "man" corresponds to '-m|--man',
  71* "info" corresponds to '-i|--info',
  72* "web" or "html" correspond to '-w|--web',
  73
  74The 'help.browser', 'web.browser' and 'browser.<tool>.path' will also
  75be checked if the 'web' format is chosen (either by command line
  76option or configuration variable). See '-w|--web' in the OPTIONS
  77section above.
  78
  79Note that these configuration variables should probably be set using
  80the '--global' flag, for example like this:
  81
  82------------------------------------------------
  83$ git config --global help.format web
  84$ git config --global web.browser firefox
  85------------------------------------------------
  86
  87as they are probably more user specific than repository specific.
  88See linkgit:git-config[1] for more information about this.
  89
  90Author
  91------
  92Written by Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> and the git-list
  93<git@vger.kernel.org>.
  94
  95Documentation
  96-------------
  97Initial documentation was part of the linkgit:git[7] man page.
  98Christian Couder <chriscool@tuxfamily.org> extracted and rewrote it a
  99little. Maintenance is done by the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>.
 100
 101GIT
 102---
 103Part of the linkgit:git[7] suite