1GIT-HELP(1) Git Manual GIT-HELP(1)
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6 git-help - Display help information about Git
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9 git help [-a|--all] [-g|--guide]
10 [-i|--info|-m|--man|-w|--web] [COMMAND|GUIDE]
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14 With no options and no COMMAND or GUIDE given, the synopsis of the git
15 command and a list of the most commonly used Git commands are printed
16 on the standard output.
17 If the option --all or -a is given, all available commands are printed
19 on the standard output.
20 If the option --guide or -g is given, a list of the useful Git guides
22 is also printed on the standard output.
23 If a command, or a guide, is given, a manual page for that command or
25 guide is brought up. The man program is used by default for this
26 purpose, but this can be overridden by other options or configuration
27 variables.
28 Note that git --help ... is identical to git help ... because the
30 former is internally converted into the latter.
31 To display the git(1) man page, use git help git.
33 This page can be displayed with git help help or git help --help
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37 -a, --all
38 Prints all the available commands on the standard output. This
39 option overrides any given command or guide name.
40 -g, --guides
42 Prints a list of useful guides on the standard output. This option
43 overrides any given command or guide name.
44 -i, --info
46 Display manual page for the command in the info format. The info
47 program will be used for that purpose.
48 -m, --man
50 Display manual page for the command in the man format. This option
51 may be used to override a value set in the help.format
52 configuration variable.
53 By default the man program will be used to display the manual page,
55 but the man.viewer configuration variable may be used to choose
56 other display programs (see below).
57 -w, --web
59 Display manual page for the command in the web (HTML) format. A web
60 browser will be used for that purpose.
61 The web browser can be specified using the configuration variable
63 help.browser, or web.browser if the former is not set. If none of
64 these config variables is set, the git web--browse helper script
65 (called by git help) will pick a suitable default. See git-
66 web--browse(1) for more information about this.
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69 help.format
70 If no command line option is passed, the help.format configuration
71 variable will be checked. The following values are supported for this
72 variable; they make git help behave as their corresponding command line
73 option:
74 · "man" corresponds to -m|--man,
76 · "info" corresponds to -i|--info,
78 · "web" or "html" correspond to -w|--web.
80 help.browser, web.browser and browser.<tool>.path
82 The help.browser, web.browser and browser.<tool>.path will also be
83 checked if the web format is chosen (either by command line option or
84 configuration variable). See -w|--web in the OPTIONS section above and
85 git-web--browse(1).
86 man.viewer
88 The man.viewer config variable will be checked if the man format is
89 chosen. The following values are currently supported:
90 · "man": use the man program as usual,
92 · "woman": use emacsclient to launch the "woman" mode in emacs (this
94 only works starting with emacsclient versions 22),
95 · "konqueror": use kfmclient to open the man page in a new konqueror
97 tab (see Note about konqueror below).
98 Values for other tools can be used if there is a corresponding
100 man.<tool>.cmd configuration entry (see below).
101 Multiple values may be given to the man.viewer configuration variable.
103 Their corresponding programs will be tried in the order listed in the
104 configuration file.
105 For example, this configuration:
107 [man]
109 viewer = konqueror
110 viewer = woman
111 will try to use konqueror first. But this may fail (for example if
114 DISPLAY is not set) and in that case emacs' woman mode will be tried.
115 If everything fails, or if no viewer is configured, the viewer
117 specified in the GIT_MAN_VIEWER environment variable will be tried. If
118 that fails too, the man program will be tried anyway.
119 man.<tool>.path
121 You can explicitly provide a full path to your preferred man viewer by
122 setting the configuration variable man.<tool>.path. For example, you
123 can configure the absolute path to konqueror by setting
124 man.konqueror.path. Otherwise, git help assumes the tool is available
125 in PATH.
126 man.<tool>.cmd
128 When the man viewer, specified by the man.viewer configuration
129 variables, is not among the supported ones, then the corresponding
130 man.<tool>.cmd configuration variable will be looked up. If this
131 variable exists then the specified tool will be treated as a custom
132 command and a shell eval will be used to run the command with the man
133 page passed as arguments.
134 Note about konqueror
136 When konqueror is specified in the man.viewer configuration variable,
137 we launch kfmclient to try to open the man page on an already opened
138 konqueror in a new tab if possible.
139 For consistency, we also try such a trick if man.konqueror.path is set
141 to something like A_PATH_TO/konqueror. That means we will try to launch
142 A_PATH_TO/kfmclient instead.
143 If you really want to use konqueror, then you can use something like
145 the following:
146 [man]
148 viewer = konq
149 [man "konq"]
151 cmd = A_PATH_TO/konqueror
152 Note about git config --global
155 Note that all these configuration variables should probably be set
156 using the --global flag, for example like this:
157 $ git config --global help.format web
159 $ git config --global web.browser firefox
160 as they are probably more user specific than repository specific. See
163 git-config(1) for more information about this.
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166 Part of the git(1) suite
167Git 1.8.3.1 11/19/2018 GIT-HELP(1)