---
layout: guide
title: Git HTML help
subtitle: 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.
description: How to install the local git HTML help files
categories: setup
---

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.

h3. 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>$ 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>

h3. 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!