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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | CONFIGURATION VARIABLES | GIT | COLOPHON |
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GIT-HELP(1) Git Manual GIT-HELP(1)
git-help - Display help information about Git
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]
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.
-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.
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.
Part of the git(1) suite
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 2025-08-11. (At that time,
the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
repository was 2025-08-07.) 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 2.51.0.rc1 2025-08-07 GIT-HELP(1)
Pages that refer to this page: git(1), git-config(1), gitcore-tutorial(7), gittutorial-2(7), gittutorial(7)
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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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