Back to main site | Back to man page index

GIT-HELP(1)                                           Git Manual                                          GIT-HELP(1)



NAME
       git-help - Display help information about Git

SYNOPSIS
       git help [-a|--all] [-g|--guide]
                  [-i|--info|-m|--man|-w|--web] [COMMAND|GUIDE]


DESCRIPTION
       With no options and no COMMAND or GUIDE given, the synopsis of the git command and a list of the most commonly
       used Git commands are printed on the standard output.

       If the option --all or -a is given, all available commands are printed on the standard output.

       If the option --guide or -g is given, a list of the useful Git guides is also printed on the standard output.

       If a command, or a guide, is given, a manual page for that command or guide is brought up. The man program is
       used by default for this purpose, but this can be overridden by other options or configuration variables.

       Note that git --help ... is identical to git help ... because the former is internally converted into the
       latter.

       To display the git(1) man page, use git help git.

       This page can be displayed with git help help or git help --help

OPTIONS
       -a, --all
           Prints all the available commands on the standard output. This option overrides any given command or guide
           name.

       -g, --guides
           Prints a list of useful guides on the standard output. This option overrides any given command or guide
           name.

       -i, --info
           Display manual page for the command in the info format. The info program will be used for that purpose.

       -m, --man
           Display manual page for the command in the man format. This option may be used to override a value set in
           the help.format configuration variable.

           By default the man program will be used to display the manual page, but the man.viewer configuration
           variable may be used to choose other display programs (see below).

       -w, --web
           Display manual page for the command in the web (HTML) format. A web browser will be used for that purpose.

           The web browser can be specified using the configuration variable help.browser, or web.browser if the
           former is not set. If none of these config variables is set, the git web--browse helper script (called by
           git help) will pick a suitable default. See git-web--browse(1) for more information about this.

CONFIGURATION VARIABLES
   help.format
       If no command line option is passed, the help.format configuration variable will be checked. The following
       values are supported for this variable; they make git help behave as their corresponding command line option:

   man.viewer
       The man.viewer config variable will be checked if the man format is chosen. The following values are currently
       supported:

       ·   "man": use the man program as usual,

       ·   "woman": use emacsclient to launch the "woman" mode in emacs (this only works starting with emacsclient
           versions 22),

       ·   "konqueror": use kfmclient to open the man page in a new konqueror tab (see Note about konqueror below).

       Values for other tools can be used if there is a corresponding man.<tool>.cmd configuration entry (see below).

       Multiple values may be given to the man.viewer configuration variable. Their corresponding programs will be
       tried in the order listed in the configuration file.

       For example, this configuration:

                   [man]
                           viewer = konqueror
                           viewer = woman


       will try to use konqueror first. But this may fail (for example if DISPLAY is not set) and in that case emacs'
       woman mode will be tried.

       If everything fails, or if no viewer is configured, the viewer specified in the GIT_MAN_VIEWER environment
       variable will be tried. If that fails too, the man program will be tried anyway.

   man.<tool>.path
       You can explicitly provide a full path to your preferred man viewer by setting the configuration variable
       man.<tool>.path. For example, you can configure the absolute path to konqueror by setting man.konqueror.path.
       Otherwise, git help assumes the tool is available in PATH.

   man.<tool>.cmd
       When the man viewer, specified by the man.viewer configuration variables, is not among the supported ones,
       then the corresponding man.<tool>.cmd configuration variable will be looked up. If this variable exists then
       the specified tool will be treated as a custom command and a shell eval will be used to run the command with
       the man page passed as arguments.

   Note about konqueror
       When konqueror is specified in the man.viewer configuration variable, we launch kfmclient to try to open the
       man page on an already opened konqueror in a new tab if possible.

       For consistency, we also try such a trick if man.konqueror.path is set to something like A_PATH_TO/konqueror.
       That means we will try to launch A_PATH_TO/kfmclient instead.

       If you really want to use konqueror, then you can use something like the following:

                   [man]
                           viewer = konq

                   [man "konq"]
                           cmd = A_PATH_TO/konqueror

GIT
       Part of the git(1) suite



Git 1.8.3.1                                           03/23/2016                                          GIT-HELP(1)