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

From: Matthieu Moy <matthieu.moy@grenoble-inp.fr>
Date: May 30, 2013, 16:42 UTC
Message-ID: <vpqtxlko1vn.fsf@anie.imag.fr>
In-Reply-To: <CAKtB=OCyoN8ECYiAzXc3UiCrLfWn7Pq7_5CSQUjJ2dhbzQ2RsQ@mail.gmail.com>

Michael Campbell <michael.campbell@gmail.com> writes:

Show 5 quoted lines

> 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.

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

-- 
Matthieu Moy
http://www-verimag.imag.fr/~moy/