English ▾ Topics ▾ Version 2.38.0 ▾ git-help last updated in 2.43.0

NAME

git-help - Display help information about Git

SYNOPSIS

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

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

-a
--all

Prints 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

Prints a list of the Git concept guides on the standard output.

--user-interfaces

Prints 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 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 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.