GIT-HELP(1)							    Git Manual							       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:

	   .ft C
		   [man]
			   viewer = konqueror
			   viewer = woman
	   .ft

       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:

	   .ft C
		   [man]
			   viewer = konq

		   [man "konq"]
			   cmd = A_PATH_TO/konqueror
	   .ft

   Note about git config --global
       Note that all these configuration variables should probably be set using the --global flag, for example like this:

	   .ft C
	   $ git config --global help.format web
	   $ git config --global web.browser firefox
	   .ft

       as they are probably more user specific than repository specific. See git-config(1) for more information about this.

AUTHOR

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

DOCUMENTATION

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

GIT

       Part of the git(1) suite

NOTES

	1. gitster@pobox.com
	   mailto:gitster@pobox.com

	2. git@vger.kernel.org
	   mailto:git@vger.kernel.org

	3. chriscool@tuxfamily.org
	   mailto:chriscool@tuxfamily.org

Git 1.7.1							    07/05/2010							       GIT-HELP(1)