Tribblix: manual page: git-help.1

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

NAME

git-help - Display help information about Git

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

With no options and no <command> or <doc> 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 --guides or -g is given, a list of the Git concept
guides is also printed on the standard output.

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

If an alias is given, git shows the definition of the alias on
standard output. To get the manual page for the aliased command, use
git <command> --help.

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
Print all the available commands on the standard output.

--no-external-commands
When used with --all, exclude the listing of external "git-*"
commands found in the $PATH.

--no-aliases
When used with --all, exclude the listing of configured aliases.

--verbose
When used with --all, print description for all recognized
commands. This is the default.

-c, --config
List all available configuration variables. This is a short
summary of the list in git-config(1).

-g, --guides
Print a list of the Git concept guides on the standard output.

--user-interfaces
Print a list of the repository, command and file interfaces
documentation on the standard output.

In-repository file interfaces such as .git/info/exclude are
documented here (see gitrepository-layout(5)), as well as in-tree
configuration such as .mailmap (see gitmailmap(5)).

This section of the documentation also covers general or
widespread user-interface conventions (e.g. gitcli(7)), and
pseudo-configuration such as the file-based .git/hooks/*
interface described in githooks(5).

--developer-interfaces
Print a list of file formats, protocols and other developer
interfaces documentation on the standard output.

-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 neither
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:

+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 configuration 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.

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.

GIT

Part of the git(1) suite

Git 2.48.1 2025-01-13 GIT-HELP(1)