From: Philip Oakley Date: Tue, 14 May 2019 14:05:16 GMT Subject: Re: git --help not actually showing the git(1) help page.. Message-ID: <3cd065d1-9db5-f2e6-ddff-aa539746d45e@iee.org> In-Reply-To: Hi Junio, On 13/05/2019 23:44, Junio C Hamano wrote: > Philip Oakley writes: > >> On GfW I commonly use the `git --help` when things go wrong, so >> making the response to that give the right advice would be good. > There are three levels of details ;-) "git --help" is meant as a > shorter and sweeter version of "git help git" that is more detailed > than "git -h". Though that's not what happens at the moment. For the plain `git --help` case it simply defaults to the `-h` case, while for any other `git cmd --help` it does pop up the git-for-windows configured web browser manual page. > It is conceivable for an enterprising developer to write a set of > documentation with medium level details and make "git add --help" > give such a medium level doc, more detailed than "git add -h" but > more concice than "git help add". I'd agree that there's a need for some typical usage/teaching level documentation to _complement_ the reference manual nature of the man pages. It's a chicken - egg situation for some users we/they need the bit of education before they can know they need to refer to, and understand, the respective man pages. > Those who did "git --help" > did not bother doing so. > I tend to go with including the complementary usage/teaching aspects in a distinct section of the man pages, though some of this is based on examples from other software, e.g. Matlab for design/systems engineers. A simplistic patch for just the 'usage' message to follow. Philip