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Yes, you can type "man" at a powershell prompt, but it's not an incarnation of man that knows anything about git, despite the limits of what you're able to fath

Yes, you can type "man" at a powershell prompt, but it's not an incarnation of man that knows anything about git, despite the limits of what you're able to fathom. PS C:\> git --version git version 2.32.0.windows.2 PS C:\> man git Get-Help : Get-Help could not find git in a help file in this session. To download updated help topics type: "Update-Help". To get help online, search for the help topic in the TechNet library at https:/go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=107116. I use `git help` regularly. I always pass it a git command. I didn't know there were other topics you can pass. I do know about "Info", in several contexts. Foremost, it's short for "information". But I bet that's not what you're talking about. Trying to run it yields "info : The term 'info' is not recognized as..." and so on.

db48x 5y ago
That is extremely sad. Your OS has apparently broken man so that newly installed applications cannot add themselves to the manual.
- recursive 5y ago
  Huh, it's never occurred to me to be sad about it. I don't mean to cause too much distress, but I think a lot of people use this operating system.
  - db48x 5y ago
    > … I think a lot of people use this operating system. That makes me even sadder. They apparently don’t have man pages. :(
db48x 5y ago
Oh, I have another question or two if you have a spare moment. Have you ever used the SEE ALSO section in the git man pages to find related information? Could you have missed the links to non–commands merely because you already knew some git commands, so you never ran “git help” without one and thus you never saw the links to the tutorial? Or is there some other cause? Incidentally, info is a different way to read documentation, one incorporating hyperlinks and a much more book–like organizational system of chapters, sections, etc. It’s a better way to document really large programs like Emacs. It’s available on most OSes, except apparently yours, and like man it allows applications to install their own documentation. It can also read man pages; it doesn’t change them very much (they don’t have chapters, for example), but it does turn references to other man pages into actual links.
- recursive 5y ago
  I'm not sure if you're counting "git help" as being man pages. I use "git help", but never had much use for "man"-anything. The "git help" I get already has hyperlinks, as it's literally html documents opened in a browser. Some of the documents have a "see also" section at the end. I rarely get that far though, as I tend to read just as far as I need to solve the problem at hand.
  - db48x 5y ago
    Yea, those html pages are generated from the same source as, and are therefore identical to, the man pages.

db48x 5y ago

That is extremely sad. Your OS has apparently broken man so that newly installed applications cannot add themselves to the manual.

recursive 5y ago
Huh, it's never occurred to me to be sad about it. I don't mean to cause too much distress, but I think a lot of people use this operating system.
- db48x 5y ago
  > … I think a lot of people use this operating system. That makes me even sadder. They apparently don’t have man pages. :(

db48x 5y ago

Oh, I have another question or two if you have a spare moment. Have you ever used the SEE ALSO section in the git man pages to find related information? Could you have missed the links to non–commands merely because you already knew some git commands, so you never ran “git help” without one and thus you never saw the links to the tutorial? Or is there some other cause? Incidentally, info is a different way to read documentation, one incorporating hyperlinks and a much more book–like organizational system of chapters, sections, etc. It’s a better way to document really large programs like Emacs. It’s available on most OSes, except apparently yours, and like man it allows applications to install their own documentation. It can also read man pages; it doesn’t change them very much (they don’t have chapters, for example), but it does turn references to other man pages into actual links.

recursive 5y ago
I'm not sure if you're counting "git help" as being man pages. I use "git help", but never had much use for "man"-anything. The "git help" I get already has hyperlinks, as it's literally html documents opened in a browser. Some of the documents have a "see also" section at the end. I rarely get that far though, as I tend to read just as far as I need to solve the problem at hand.
- db48x 5y ago
  Yea, those html pages are generated from the same source as, and are therefore identical to, the man pages.