CODEWITHSUNDEEP
windowsgitconsole
Billy ONeal
Billy ONeal

Reputation: 106530

How does one disable Git's HTML help (on Windows)?

I installed Github for Windows which comes with the Git command line client, and whenever I forget a switch or something and want to use --help, instead of dumping to the console it's launching a browser. Is there a way to ask Git to dump the help to the console (as it does in most Unixen by default) instead of launching a browser?

Upvotes: 13

Views: 1503

Answers (3)

Lee Smith
Lee Smith

Reputation: 6737

In windows

git <command> -h

will write help to the terminal output

git <command> --help

will pop up a browser window

Upvotes: 12

McMustard
McMustard

Reputation: 169

This is a frail workaround, but if you just want a quick usage summary, feed the git sub-command of your choice a deliberately bad option name. I tried "--halp". For example:

$ git stash --halp
error: unknown option for 'stash save': --halp
       To provide a message, use git stash save -- '--halp'
usage: git core\git-stash list [<options>]
   or: git core\git-stash show [<stash>]
   or: git core\git-stash drop [-q|--quiet] [<stash>]
   or: git core\git-stash ( pop | apply ) [--index] [-q|--quiet] [<stash>]
   or: git core\git-stash branch <branchname> [<stash>]
   or: git core\git-stash [save [--patch] [-k|--[no-]keep-index] [-q|--quiet]
                       [-u|--include-untracked] [-a|--all] [<message>]]
   or: git core\git-stash clear

I can't say for sure that "halp" will always be rejected, but it seems to get the job done. Hopefully it'll never get interpreted as a usable parameter. This is probably better than random typing, for example, since you might randomly type in correct input.

Upvotes: 7

Dawnkeeper
Dawnkeeper

Reputation: 2877

For Linux systems you could set this with git config --global help.format <web|man|info>. Unfortunately the man pages are not part of the Git for Windows bundle so only 'web' works.

Upvotes: 7

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