git help user-manual looks for incorrect filename

git help user-manual looks for incorrect filename

[John Wilson]

Hi,

I would like to raise this issue, as suggested when I erroneously posted on the git-for-windows repo (https://github.com/git-for-windows/git/issues/6466)

## Issue

On Git for Windows git help user-manual looks for the wrong file.
Git looks for gituser-manual.html, instead of user-manual.html.

The Git User's Manual is installed as:
`C:\Program Files\Git\mingw64\share\doc\git-doc\user-manual.html`

However, git help user-manual fails with:
`fatal: 'C:/Program Files/Git/mingw64/share/doc/git-doc/gituser-manual.html': documentation file not found.`

## Actual behaviour

$ git help user-manual
fatal: 'C:/Program Files/Git/mingw64/share/doc/git-doc/gituser-manual.html': documentation file not found.

Many thanks,

John
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336. Is e buidheann carthannais a th’ ann an Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann, clàraichte an Alba, àireamh clàraidh SC005336.

Re: git help user-manual looks for incorrect filename

[D. Ben Knoble]

Hi John

On Thu, Oct 15, 2026 at 3:50 AM John Wilson <jwilso3@ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I would like to raise this issue, as suggested when I erroneously posted on the git-for-windows repo (https://github.com/git-for-windows/git/issues/6466)
>
> ## Issue
>
> On Git for Windows git help user-manual looks for the wrong file.
> Git looks for gituser-manual.html, instead of user-manual.html.
>
> The Git User's Manual is installed as:
> `C:\Program Files\Git\mingw64\share\doc\git-doc\user-manual.html`
>
> However, git help user-manual fails with:
> `fatal: 'C:/Program Files/Git/mingw64/share/doc/git-doc/gituser-manual.html': documentation file not found.`

I don't think "git help" actually knows about the user-manual,
surprisingly. It's not in the list of "git help --guides".

You can do something like "xdg-open $(git
--html-path)/user-manual.html" (macOS: open; Windows: ???), but that's
not very easy to discover.

You can of course also access versions of that manual on
https://git-scm.com/ and http://git.github.io/htmldocs/.

Still, I've been wondering for a while about extending "git help" to
access more of the documents installed in --html-path…

[later]

Ok, in this specific case, "git help --guides" lists whatever it can
find from the compile-time built command-list.h with CAT_guide (so we
could make that generator create an entry for the user manual?). But
when it comes to actually opening a document, we process the command
line through cmd_to_page() which adds the "git" prefix as a fallback
path. So any document in "git --html-path" that doesn't start with
"git" has to be opened in the rather obtuse workaround way I mentioned
earlier.

Hm.

-- 
D. Ben Knoble

Re: git help user-manual looks for incorrect filename

[Junio C Hamano]

John Wilson <jwilso3@ed.ac.uk> writes:

> Hi,
>
> I would like to raise this issue, as suggested when I erroneously
> posted on the git-for-windows repo
> (https://github.com/git-for-windows/git/issues/6466)
>
> ## Issue
>
> On Git for Windows git help user-manual looks for the wrong file.
> Git looks for gituser-manual.html, instead of user-manual.html.
>
> The Git User's Manual is installed as:
> `C:\Program Files\Git\mingw64\share\doc\git-doc\user-manual.html`
>
> However, git help user-manual fails with: `fatal: 'C:/Program
> Files/Git/mingw64/share/doc/git-doc/gituser-manual.html':
> documentation file not found.`

Thanks for reporting.  I can see that this is not GfW specific.

    $ git help --guides
    The Git concept guides are:
       core-tutorial    A Git core tutorial for developers
       credentials      Providing usernames and passwords to Git
       cvs-migration    Git for CVS users
       datamodel        Git's core data model
       diffcore         Tweaking diff output
       everyday         A useful minimum set of commands for Everyday Git
       faq              Frequently asked questions about using Git
       glossary         A Git Glossary
       namespaces       Git namespaces
       remote-helpers   Helper programs to interact with remote repositories
       submodules       Mounting one repository inside another
       tutorial         A tutorial introduction to Git
       tutorial-2       A tutorial introduction to Git: part two
       workflows        An overview of recommended workflows with Git

    'git help -a' and 'git help -g' list available subcommands and some
    concept guides. See 'git help <command>' or 'git help <concept>'
    to read about a specific subcommand or concept.
    See 'git help git' for an overview of the system.

Any of the documents that are listed above can be seen correctly

    $ git help -w everyday

But user-manual is not even listed among the above.

A few things probably needs to happen.

 * user-manual and any other "missing" documents need to be
   identified and added to the above list of --guides.

 * any of these "missing" documents are not installed with "git"
   prefix (e.g., "user-manual" becomes "gituser-manual"), their
   install path may need to be adjusted.  The old paths for them
   may also need to be retained if users have been accessing them
   via the old pathnames.