git-help

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

NAME
       git-help - Display help information about Git

SYNOPSIS
       git help [-a|--all [--[no-]verbose]] [-g|--guide]
                  [-i|--info|-m|--man|-w|--web] [COMMAND|GUIDE]

DESCRIPTION
       With no options and no COMMAND or GUIDE 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 --guide or -g is given, a list of the useful Git guides
       is also printed on the standard output.

       If a command, or a guide, is given, a manual page for that command or
       guide is 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
           Prints all the available commands on the standard output. This
           option overrides any given command or guide name.

       --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
           Prints a list of useful guides on the standard output. This option
           overrides any given command or guide name.

       -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 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 2.25.1                        04/26/2023                       GIT-HELP(1)