GIT-HELP(1)                                                        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.


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.


       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-HELP(1)
