git help

git help <cmd>, or git <cmd> --help. Read the manuals.

🎯 What & why

git help is your manual. 'git help <cmd>' opens the full man page; 'git <cmd> -h' shows the one-screen summary. Read the manuals - they are unusually good.

🧠 Mental model

Three layers: -h for the cheat sheet, git help <cmd> for the full reference, git help -g for conceptual guides. Pick the layer that matches your question.

🛠️ Synopsis

git help [-a|--all] [-g|--guides] [-i|--info] [-m|--man] [-w|--web]
             [-v|--verbose] [--config] [<command>|<guide>]

🎚️ Switches & options

Flag	What it does
`-a, --all`	List every git command available on this system
`-g, --guides`	List the conceptual guides (gitcore-tutorial, gitglossary, gitworkflows...)
`-i, --info`	Render the page through info instead of man
`-m, --man`	Force the man backend (default on Linux)
`-w, --web`	Open the HTML page in a browser
`-v, --verbose`	With --all, also show one-line descriptions
`--config`	Dump every config variable Git knows about - searchable gold

💡 Use cases

Looking up an option you half-remember
Discovering commands you did not know existed (git help -a)
Reading conceptual material like gitworkflows or gitrevisions
Finding which config keys exist (git help --config | grep ...)

🧪 Examples

Full man page

git help rebase

Quick summary

git rebase -h

List all commands

git help -a

Read a guide

git help gitrevisions

🎓 Recommendations

Set help.format=web in ~/.gitconfig if you prefer HTML in a browser.
Skim 'git help -g' once - guides like gitworkflows and gitrevisions are worth the time.
When debugging weird config behavior, 'git help --config | grep <thing>' beats googling.

🪤 Common pitfalls

git help <cmd> requires man pages installed - some minimal Docker images omit them.
-h and --help do different things: -h is short, --help opens the full manual.
Web backend needs a browser configured; on headless servers it may fail silently.

🔗 Related modules

📝 Quiz

Hit each option, then Check answers. Score is recorded; Next is always open.