Re: Should "git help" respect the 'pager' setting?

From: Ramkumar Ramachandra <artagnon@gmail.com>
Date: May 30, 2013, 16:56 UTC
Message-ID: <CALkWK0=RUy6=4k9uGpy2efdL8DhOnNO52rHZWSmHP3C=2a4SUw@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <vpqtxlko1vn.fsf@anie.imag.fr>

Matthieu Moy wrote:

Show 11 quoted lines

> Michael Campbell <michael.campbell@gmail.com> writes:
>> I have my global git config pager set to 'cat', but when I do a "git
>> help <command>", it still uses a pager.  This is especially irksome in
>> emacs shell buffers, where I am most of the time.  I know I can do a
>> M-x man -> git-<whatever>, but wondered if this was a bug or user
>> error.  ("git --no-pager help <command>" does the same.)
>
> "git help foo" just calls "man git-foo" by default, so what happens is
> the same as if you called "man git-foo" by hand. Git does not have
> much control over what man will do, it could probably call "man -P
> $pager" when the Git pager is set, but I'd find it a bit weird.

It just needs to set $PAGER or $MANPAGER before the exec(), no? I would argue that it should do this. $GIT_PAGER works everywhere else, but obviously man has no knowledge about it.

> If you're an Emacs user, you can read about man.viewer and set it to
> woman, or set PAGER=cat when inside Emacs.

I just learnt about man.viewer. There's a small problem with it though: why is there no option for Emacs man corresponding to Emacs woman?

> I personally run M-x git-foo RET, and never run "git help".

M-x man git-foo RET, you mean? My style is slightly different: I love typing out 'man git log' on the terminal (dashless); I get it to open in an Emacs buffer using this hack:

function man_ () {
	emacsclient -e "(man \"$*\")" 2>&1 >/dev/null || man "$*"
}

alias man=man_