Manual: git-help

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

NAME
git-help - Display help information about Git

DESCRIPTION
With no options and no or 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 --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
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
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..path
The help.browser, web.browser and browser..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..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..path
You can explicitly provide a full path to your preferred man viewer by setting the configuration
variable man..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..cmd
When the man viewer, specified by the man.viewer configuration variables, is not among the supported
ones, then the corresponding man..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 2.53.0 03/02/2026 GIT-HELP(1)

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Manual: git-help

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