From: Jon Seymour <jon.seymour@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 02 May 2011 00:06:40 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Add --info-path and --man-path options to git.
Message-ID: <BANLkTik-8WVsw-_P7=-pEiXFLeoQQRAVeg@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <7v62puq8a5.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>

On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 10:02 AM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
> Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> By contrast, man and info typically use standard search mechanisms:
>> man using $MANPATH and info using the dir.info file.  The usual
>> interface to git's documentation through a man browser is not
>>
>>       man /usr/share/man/man1/git-add.1.gz
>>
>> but
>>
>>       man git-add;    # or "man git add" if your man viewer supports it
>
> I think you are forgetting the case where the git-man-path the user uses
> to install git may be outside /usr/share/man (e.g. $HOME/share/man).  In
> such an installation, by setting $PATH to include your installed git
> binary (e.g. $HOME/bin), you should be able to say "git help -m git" to
> tell help.c to internally prepend $HOME/share/man to the $MANPATH before
> it kicks "man".  Does "man git-add" work without you knowing where that
> directory is (iow, without having $HOME/share/man on $MANPATH)?  And if it
> does not, how would you learn what directory to add to your $MANPATH?
>
> Isn't that what this patch is solving?  I am not sure where the similarity
> with the html documentation breaks donw.  The same thing for info.

Good point. For non-distro installed installations of git, this would
be handy, even for read-only purposes.

jon.