git-help: add "help.format" config variable.

This config variable makes it possible to choose the default format
used to display help. This format will be used only if no option
like -a|--all|-i|--info|-m|--man|-w|--web is passed to "git-help".

The following values are possible for this variable:

	- "man"  --> "man" program is used
	- "info" --> "info" program is used
	- "web"  --> "git-browse-help" is used

By default we still show help using "man".

This patch also adds -m|--man command line option to use "man"
to allow overriding the "help.format" configuration variable.

Note that this patch also revert some recent changes in
"git-browse-help" because they prevented to look for config
variables in the global configuration file.

Signed-off-by: Christian Couder <chriscool@tuxfamily.org>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

1 files changed, 35 insertions, 2 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/git-help.txt b/Documentation/git-help.txt
index ac9e15d774..31ec403a70 100644
--- a/Documentation/git-help.txt
+++ b/Documentation/git-help.txt
@@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ git-help - display help information about git
 
 SYNOPSIS
 --------
-'git help' [-a|--all|-i|--info|-w|--web] [COMMAND]
+'git help' [-a|--all|-i|--info|-m|--man|-w|--web] [COMMAND]
 
 DESCRIPTION
 -----------
@@ -21,7 +21,7 @@ printed on the standard output.
 
 If a git command is named, a manual page for that command is brought
 up. The 'man' program is used by default for this purpose, but this
-can be overriden by other options.
+can be overriden by other options or configuration variables.
 
 Note that 'git --help ...' is identical as 'git help ...' because the
 former is internally converted into the latter.
@@ -36,6 +36,11 @@ OPTIONS
 	Use the 'info' program to display the manual page, instead of
 	the 'man' program that is used by default.
 
+-m|--man::
+	Use the 'man' program to display the manual page. This may be
+	used to override a value set in the 'help.format'
+	configuration variable.
+
 -w|--web::
 	Use a web browser to display the HTML manual page, instead of
 	the 'man' program that is used by default.
@@ -54,6 +59,34 @@ is available in PATH.
 Note that the script tries, as much as possible, to display the HTML
 page in a new tab on an already opened browser.
 
+CONFIGURATION VARIABLES
+-----------------------
+
+If no command line option is passed, the 'help.format' configuration
+variable will be checked. The following values are supported for this
+variable; they make 'git-help' behave as their corresponding command
+line option:
+
+* "man" corresponds to '-m|--man',
+* "info" corresponds to '-i|--info',
+* "web" or "html" correspond to '-w|--web',
+
+The 'help.browser', 'web.browser' and 'browser.<tool>.path' will also
+be checked if the 'web' format is choosen (either by command line
+option or configuration variable). See '-w|--web' in the OPTIONS
+section above.
+
+Note that these configuration variables should probably be set using
+the '--global' flag, for example like this:
+
+------------------------------------------------
+$ git config --global help.format web
+$ git config --global web.browser firefox
+------------------------------------------------
+
+as they are probably more user specific than repository specific.
+See gitlink:git-config[1] for more information about this.
+
 Author
 ------
 Written by Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> and the git-list