git-help
(1)
Name
git-help - display help information about git
Synopsis
git help [-a|--all|-i|--info|-m|--man|-w|--web] [COMMAND]
Description
Git Manual GIT-HELP(1)
NAME
git-help - display help information about git
SYNOPSIS
git help [-a|--all|-i|--info|-m|--man|-w|--web] [COMMAND]
DESCRIPTION
With no options and no COMMAND 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, then all available
commands are printed on the standard output.
If a git command is named, a manual page for that command 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.
OPTIONS
-a, --all
Prints all the available commands on the standard
output. This option supersedes any other option.
-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.
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Git Manual GIT-HELP(1)
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:
o "man" corresponds to -m|--man,
o "info" corresponds to -i|--info,
o "web" or "html" correspond to -w|--web.
help.browser, web.browser and browser.<tool>.path
The help.browser, web.browser and browser.<tool>.path will
also be checked if the web format is chosen (either by
command line option or configuration variable). See -w|--web
in the OPTIONS section above and git-web--browse(1).
man.viewer
The man.viewer config variable will be checked if the man
format is chosen. The following values are currently
supported:
o "man": use the man program as usual,
o "woman": use emacsclient to launch the "woman" mode in
emacs (this only works starting with emacsclient
versions 22),
o "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.
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Git Manual GIT-HELP(1)
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
Note about git config --global
Note that all these configuration variables should probably
be set using the --global flag, for example like this:
$ git config --global help.format web
$ git config --global web.browser firefox
as they are probably more user specific than repository
specific. See git-config(1) for more information about this.
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Git Manual GIT-HELP(1)
GIT
Part of the git(1) suite
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following
attributes:
+---------------+--------------------------+
|ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
+---------------+--------------------------+
|Availability | developer/versioning/git |
+---------------+--------------------------+
|Stability | Uncommitted |
+---------------+--------------------------+
NOTES
This software was built from source available at
https://java.net/projects/solaris-userland. The original
community source was downloaded from http://git-
core.googlecode.com/files/git-1.7.9.2.tar.gz
Further information about this software can be found on the
open source community website at http://git-scm.com/.
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