git-help(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | CONFIGURATION VARIABLES | GIT | COLOPHON

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

NAME         top

       git-help - Display help information about Git

SYNOPSIS         top

       git help [-a|--all] [--[no-]verbose] [--[no-]external-commands] [--[no-]aliases]
       git help [[-i|--info] [-m|--man] [-w|--web]] [<command>|<doc>]
       git help [-g|--guides]
       git help [-c|--config]
       git help [--user-interfaces]
       git help [--developer-interfaces]

DESCRIPTION         top

       With no options and no <command> or <doc> 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 --guides or -g is given, a list of the Git concept
       guides is also printed on the standard output.

       If a command or other documentation is given, the relevant manual
       page will be 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         top

       -a, --all
           Print all the available commands on the standard output.

       --no-external-commands
           When used with --all, exclude the listing of external "git-*"
           commands found in the $PATH.

       --no-aliases
           When used with --all, exclude the listing of configured
           aliases.

       --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
           Print a list of the Git concept guides on the standard
           output.

       --user-interfaces
           Print a list of the repository, command and file interfaces
           documentation on the standard output.

           In-repository file interfaces such as .git/info/exclude are
           documented here (see gitrepository-layout(5)), as well as
           in-tree configuration such as .mailmap (see gitmailmap(5)).

           This section of the documentation also covers general or
           widespread user-interface conventions (e.g.  gitcli(7)), and
           pseudo-configuration such as the file-based .git/hooks/*
           interface described in githooks(5).

       --developer-interfaces
           Print a list of file formats, protocols and other developer
           interfaces documentation on the standard output.

       -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 neither 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         top

   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:

       •   "man" corresponds to -m|--man,

       •   "info" corresponds to -i|--info,

       •   "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:

       •   "man": use the man program as usual,

       •   "woman": use emacsclient to launch the "woman" mode in emacs
           (this only works starting with emacsclient versions 22),

       •   "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         top

       Part of the git(1) suite

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the git (Git distributed version control
       system) project.  Information about the project can be found at
       ⟨http://git-scm.com/⟩.  If you have a bug report for this manual
       page, see ⟨http://git-scm.com/community⟩.  This page was obtained
       from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/git/git.git⟩ on 2023-12-22.  (At that time,
       the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
       repository was 2023-12-20.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
       is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

Git 2.43.0.174.g055bb6         2023-12-20                    GIT-HELP(1)

Pages that refer to this page: git(1)git-config(1)gitcore-tutorial(7)gittutorial-2(7)gittutorial(7)