---
layout: default
title: Installing Git HTML help
description: How to install the local git HTML help files
categories: setup
---

This guide will help you install the local git HTML help files and set git to use them by default instead of the man pages.

Most git installations will install man files for help, but not the HTML help files (the same files seen on git's "online documentation":http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git-core/docs/).  Installing these help files is a fairly simple process.

h2. Windows

"Msysgit":http://code.google.com/p/msysgit/ installs and sets the HTML help files as the default automatically.  You don't need to do anything!

h2. OSX

The following commands were run on an installation of the "git-osx-installer":http://code.google.com/p/git-osx-installer/.  Your documentation path may be different, pay attention to the output of @git help --web commit@ for where your git is set to look for the HTML files.

<pre class="terminal">$ git help --web commit
fatal: '/usr/local/git/share/doc/git-doc': not a documentation directory.

$ git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git
Initialized empty Git repository in /Users/tekkub/git/.git/
remote: Counting objects: 101588, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (27214/27214), done.
remote: Total 101588 (delta 73797), reused 100304 (delta 72681)
Receiving objects: 100% (101588/101588), 24.50 MiB | 377 KiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (73797/73797), done.
Checking out files: 100% (1652/1652), done.

$ cd git
$ make quick-install-html
GIT_VERSION = 1.6.3.3.385.g60647
make -C Documentation quick-install-html
    GEN doc.dep
    SUBDIR ../
make[2]: `GIT-VERSION-FILE' is up to date.
    SUBDIR ../
make[2]: `GIT-VERSION-FILE' is up to date.
'/bin/sh' ./install-doc-quick.sh origin/html /Users/tekkub/share/doc/git-doc

$ cd /usr/local/git/share/
$ sudo mkdir doc
$ cd doc/
$ sudo mv ~/share/doc/git-doc .
$ git help --web commit
 (web browser launches)

$ git config --global help.format web</pre>