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

6       git-help - display help information about git
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SYNOPSIS

9       git help [-a|--all|-i|--info|-m|--man|-w|--web] [COMMAND]
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DESCRIPTION

12       With no options and no COMMAND given, the synopsis of the git command
13       and a list of the most commonly used git commands are printed on the
14       standard output.
15
16       If the option --all or -a is given, then all available commands are
17       printed on the standard output.
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19       If a git command is named, a manual page for that command is brought
20       up. The man program is used by default for this purpose, but this can
21       be overridden by other options or configuration variables.
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23       Note that git --help ... is identical to git help ... because the
24       former is internally converted into the latter.
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OPTIONS

27       -a, --all
28           Prints all the available commands on the standard output. This
29           option supersedes any other option.
30
31       -i, --info
32           Display manual page for the command in the info format. The info
33           program will be used for that purpose.
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35       -m, --man
36           Display manual page for the command in the man format. This option
37           may be used to override a value set in the help.format
38           configuration variable.
39
40           By default the man program will be used to display the manual page,
41           but the man.viewer configuration variable may be used to choose
42           other display programs (see below).
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44       -w, --web
45           Display manual page for the command in the web (HTML) format. A web
46           browser will be used for that purpose.
47
48           The web browser can be specified using the configuration variable
49           help.browser, or web.browser if the former is not set. If none of
50           these config variables is set, the git web--browse helper script
51           (called by git help) will pick a suitable default. See git-
52           web--browse(1) for more information about this.
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CONFIGURATION VARIABLES

55   help.format
56       If no command line option is passed, the help.format configuration
57       variable will be checked. The following values are supported for this
58       variable; they make git help behave as their corresponding command line
59       option:
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61       ·   "man" corresponds to -m|--man,
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63       ·   "info" corresponds to -i|--info,
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65       ·   "web" or "html" correspond to -w|--web.
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67   help.browser, web.browser and browser.<tool>.path
68       The help.browser, web.browser and browser.<tool>.path will also be
69       checked if the web format is chosen (either by command line option or
70       configuration variable). See -w|--web in the OPTIONS section above and
71       git-web--browse(1).
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73   man.viewer
74       The man.viewer config variable will be checked if the man format is
75       chosen. The following values are currently supported:
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77       ·   "man": use the man program as usual,
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79       ·   "woman": use emacsclient to launch the "woman" mode in emacs (this
80           only works starting with emacsclient versions 22),
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82       ·   "konqueror": use kfmclient to open the man page in a new konqueror
83           tab (see Note about konqueror below).
84
85       Values for other tools can be used if there is a corresponding
86       man.<tool>.cmd configuration entry (see below).
87
88       Multiple values may be given to the man.viewer configuration variable.
89       Their corresponding programs will be tried in the order listed in the
90       configuration file.
91
92       For example, this configuration:
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94                   [man]
95                           viewer = konqueror
96                           viewer = woman
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98
99       will try to use konqueror first. But this may fail (for example if
100       DISPLAY is not set) and in that case emacs' woman mode will be tried.
101
102       If everything fails, or if no viewer is configured, the viewer
103       specified in the GIT_MAN_VIEWER environment variable will be tried. If
104       that fails too, the man program will be tried anyway.
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106   man.<tool>.path
107       You can explicitly provide a full path to your preferred man viewer by
108       setting the configuration variable man.<tool>.path. For example, you
109       can configure the absolute path to konqueror by setting
110       man.konqueror.path. Otherwise, git help assumes the tool is available
111       in PATH.
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113   man.<tool>.cmd
114       When the man viewer, specified by the man.viewer configuration
115       variables, is not among the supported ones, then the corresponding
116       man.<tool>.cmd configuration variable will be looked up. If this
117       variable exists then the specified tool will be treated as a custom
118       command and a shell eval will be used to run the command with the man
119       page passed as arguments.
120
121   Note about konqueror
122       When konqueror is specified in the man.viewer configuration variable,
123       we launch kfmclient to try to open the man page on an already opened
124       konqueror in a new tab if possible.
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126       For consistency, we also try such a trick if man.konqueror.path is set
127       to something like A_PATH_TO/konqueror. That means we will try to launch
128       A_PATH_TO/kfmclient instead.
129
130       If you really want to use konqueror, then you can use something like
131       the following:
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133                   [man]
134                           viewer = konq
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136                   [man "konq"]
137                           cmd = A_PATH_TO/konqueror
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139
140   Note about git config --global
141       Note that all these configuration variables should probably be set
142       using the --global flag, for example like this:
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144           $ git config --global help.format web
145           $ git config --global web.browser firefox
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147
148       as they are probably more user specific than repository specific. See
149       git-config(1) for more information about this.
150

AUTHOR

152       Written by Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com[1]> and the git-list
153       <git@vger.kernel.org[2]>.
154

DOCUMENTATION

156       Initial documentation was part of the git(1) man page. Christian Couder
157       <chriscool@tuxfamily.org[3]> extracted and rewrote it a little.
158       Maintenance is done by the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org[2]>.
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GIT

161       Part of the git(1) suite
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NOTES

164        1. gitster@pobox.com
165           mailto:gitster@pobox.com
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167        2. git@vger.kernel.org
168           mailto:git@vger.kernel.org
169
170        3. chriscool@tuxfamily.org
171           mailto:chriscool@tuxfamily.org
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175Git 1.7.4.4                       04/11/2011                       GIT-HELP(1)
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