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A handful of help-related patches

From
Chris Webb <chris@arachsys.com>
Date
Jun 27, 2012, 20:54 UTC
Message-ID
<20120627205459.GC11498@arachsys.com>

Whilst looking at git-rebase, I noticed I have a few local git --help related patches from a couple of years ago that I use on my own systems.

I'm not sure whether they're just personal quirks, but I thought I should post them to the list in case they're of wider interest or might be relevant upstream.

The first two patches allow the HTML path used by git-help --web to be set in .gitconfig, and allow it to be a URL prefix, so you can do

  [help]
    format = html
    htmlpath = http://git-scm.com/docs

git wibble --help will then open http://git-scm.com/docs/git-wibble.html instead of /share/doc/git/html/git-wibble.html in your browser.

The third patch adds a help format called 'usage' making git wibble --help equivalent to git wibble -h, i.e. printing short command-line usage information. (Generally that's what I want and I end up rather surprised when I get an unwanted man page because my fingers are trained to type the more universal --help rather than -h.)

This 'usage' help format is also good for making --help do something useful other than produce an error message on our cut-down servers without man pages, web browsers and so on.

Best wishes,
Chris.
Next: Chris Webb
Message 1 of 15 in “A handful of help-related patches”
  1. Chris WebbJun 27, 2012
  2. 1/3 Add config variable to set HTML path for git-help --webChris Webb, Jun 27, 2012
  3. 2/3 Allow help.htmlpath to be an http: URLChris Webb, Jun 27, 2012
  4. Jeff KingJun 27, 2012
  5. Chris WebbJun 27, 2012
  6. Junio C HamanoJun 27, 2012
  7. Chris WebbJun 27, 2012
  8. Jeff KingJun 27, 2012
  9. Chris WebbJun 27, 2012
  10. Jeff KingJun 27, 2012
  11. Junio C HamanoJun 28, 2012
  12. Chris WebbJun 28, 2012
  13. Jeff KingJun 28, 2012
  14. Chris WebbJun 28, 2012
  15. 3/3 Add a help format 'usage' to provide brief command usageChris Webb, Jun 27, 2012

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