Anybody know a website with up-to-date git documentation?

Anybody know a website with up-to-date git documentation?

[Max Horn]

Hi,

does anybody know a website where one can view that latest git documentation? Here, "latest" means "latest release" (though being also able to access it for "next" would of course be a nice bonus, likewise for older versions). While I do have those docs on my local machine, I would like to access them online, too (e.g. easier to pointer people at this, I can access it from other machines, etc.).


My problem is that all sites I know of are outdated, and thus don't show recent improvements. Also, for many it is hard to determine for which version of git they carry documentation. Here are the contenders I know, and the problems they have:


* The closest I know is http://git-scm.com/ -- they fit the bill almost perfectly. Except that sadly, some pages that are crucial for me are permanently stuck at outdated versions, like http://git-scm.com/docs/git-remote-helpers which is stuck at 1.7.12.3. I tried contacting them about this for two months now, but to no avail (multiple bug reports, direct emails, etc. all went w/o reaction). Of course time and resources are limited, so I fully understand and respect that the people behind it (Scott Chacon in particular, who did an awesome job creating that site in the first place) have other priorities.

* http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/ was last updated in May 2012. No hints on who maintains this and how to contact them. Attempts to contact kernel.org webadmins to find out more were not answered either :-(. Anybody know more?

* http://schacon.github.com/git/git-remote-helpers.html was lasted updated in May 2011. I assume git-scm.com is supposed to replace it, though, as Scott Chacon made git-scm.com. (In that case, a redirect to git-scm.com might be nice *g* but of course is extra work) 

* http://www.manpagez.com/man/1/git/ and http://man.he.net/man1/git at least document on each page from which git version it is taken. Unfortunately, both are stuck at the 1.7.x series.

* http://linux.die.net/man/1/git does not indicate the git version, but it seems to be a 1.7.x, too


Anybody know an up-to-date alternative? Or do I have to setup my own? :-(.


Cheers,
Max

Re: Anybody know a website with up-to-date git documentation?

[John Keeping]

On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 12:46:47PM +0100, Max Horn wrote:
> does anybody know a website where one can view that latest git
> documentation? Here, "latest" means "latest release" (though being
> also able to access it for "next" would of course be a nice bonus,
> likewise for older versions). While I do have those docs on my local
> machine, I would like to access them online, too (e.g. easier to
> pointer people at this, I can access it from other machines, etc.).

How about http://git-htmldocs.googlecode.com/git/ ?

It's just a directory listing of the git-htmldocs repository that Junio
maintains - the latest update was yesterday: Autogenerated HTML docs for
v1.8.1.2-422-g08c0e.

[I didn't know Google Code let you view the repository like that, but I
got there by clicking the "raw" link against one of the files so I
assume it's not likely to go away.]


John

Re: Anybody know a website with up-to-date git documentation?

[Sebastian Staudt]

Hello Max,

git-scm.com is the best source and it's not outdated. It gets an
update after every single release of Git.
See e.g. http://git-scm.com/docs/git-config which was updated in the
current stable version.
It seems that git-remote-helper's documentation was just not updated
since version 1.7.12.3.

Best regards,
    Sebastian

2013/1/30 John Keeping <john@keeping.me.uk>:
> On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 12:46:47PM +0100, Max Horn wrote:
>> does anybody know a website where one can view that latest git
>> documentation? Here, "latest" means "latest release" (though being
>> also able to access it for "next" would of course be a nice bonus,
>> likewise for older versions). While I do have those docs on my local
>> machine, I would like to access them online, too (e.g. easier to
>> pointer people at this, I can access it from other machines, etc.).
>
> How about http://git-htmldocs.googlecode.com/git/ ?
>
> It's just a directory listing of the git-htmldocs repository that Junio
> maintains - the latest update was yesterday: Autogenerated HTML docs for
> v1.8.1.2-422-g08c0e.
>
> [I didn't know Google Code let you view the repository like that, but I
> got there by clicking the "raw" link against one of the files so I
> assume it's not likely to go away.]
>
>
> John
> --
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html

Re: Anybody know a website with up-to-date git documentation?

[Max Horn]

Hi Sebastian,

On 30.01.2013, at 12:56, Sebastian Staudt wrote:

> Hello Max,
> 
> git-scm.com is the best source and it's not outdated.

Then it seems you are using the word "outdated" in a different way than me which I don't understand :-). Sure, it strives to be up-to-date, but fact is that it fails to do that, due to a bug (I guess). The end result (failure to update at all, vs. failure in an attempted update) sadly amount to the same.

> It gets an
> update after every single release of Git.
> See e.g. http://git-scm.com/docs/git-config which was updated in the
> current stable version.
> It seems that git-remote-helper's documentation was just not updated
> since version 1.7.12.3.

Yes, and it is not alone in that, which makes the site somewhat unreliable, sadly. Some more examples of pages tuck at version 1.7.12.3 and showing outdated content:

http://git-scm.com/docs/git-log
http://git-scm.com/docs/git-merge
http://git-scm.com/docs/git-merge-base
http://git-scm.com/docs/git-mergetool
http://git-scm.com/docs/git-reset
http://git-scm.com/docs/git-rm
http://git-scm.com/docs/git-status
http://git-scm.com/docs/git-symbolic-ref

I did not bother to check every single page, though, and I am pretty sure there are plenty more. Because there definitely is a plethora of other pages that are stuck at 1.7.12.3. Several of them still show the latest version due to not having had updates since the 1.7.12.3, but that is not always easy to tell due to included files (e.g. git-log.txt was not changed v1.7.12.2, but it includes rev-list-options.txt which was last changed in 1.8.1).


So, yeah, I do think git-scm.com is outdated -- in the sense that for many pages, it does not show the latest officially released version of the page.


Best regards,
Max

Re: Anybody know a website with up-to-date git documentation?

[Sebastian Staudt]

Hi Max,

it seems that this is some sort of caching problem on git-scm.com.

I saw you've already opened an issue at
https://github.com/github/gitscm-next/issues/232.
So there's probably not much you can do right now.

And I don't know any better source for documentation right now, apart
from the locally installed HTML version.

Best regards,
    Sebastian

2013/1/30 Max Horn <max@quendi.de>:
> Hi Sebastian,
>
> On 30.01.2013, at 12:56, Sebastian Staudt wrote:
>
>> Hello Max,
>>
>> git-scm.com is the best source and it's not outdated.
>
> Then it seems you are using the word "outdated" in a different way than me which I don't understand :-). Sure, it strives to be up-to-date, but fact is that it fails to do that, due to a bug (I guess). The end result (failure to update at all, vs. failure in an attempted update) sadly amount to the same.
>
>> It gets an
>> update after every single release of Git.
>> See e.g. http://git-scm.com/docs/git-config which was updated in the
>> current stable version.
>> It seems that git-remote-helper's documentation was just not updated
>> since version 1.7.12.3.
>
> Yes, and it is not alone in that, which makes the site somewhat unreliable, sadly. Some more examples of pages tuck at version 1.7.12.3 and showing outdated content:
>
> http://git-scm.com/docs/git-log
> http://git-scm.com/docs/git-merge
> http://git-scm.com/docs/git-merge-base
> http://git-scm.com/docs/git-mergetool
> http://git-scm.com/docs/git-reset
> http://git-scm.com/docs/git-rm
> http://git-scm.com/docs/git-status
> http://git-scm.com/docs/git-symbolic-ref
>
> I did not bother to check every single page, though, and I am pretty sure there are plenty more. Because there definitely is a plethora of other pages that are stuck at 1.7.12.3. Several of them still show the latest version due to not having had updates since the 1.7.12.3, but that is not always easy to tell due to included files (e.g. git-log.txt was not changed v1.7.12.2, but it includes rev-list-options.txt which was last changed in 1.8.1).
>
>
> So, yeah, I do think git-scm.com is outdated -- in the sense that for many pages, it does not show the latest officially released version of the page.
>
>
> Best regards,
> Max

Re: Anybody know a website with up-to-date git documentation?

[Max Horn]

On 30.01.2013, at 12:54, John Keeping wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 12:46:47PM +0100, Max Horn wrote:
>> does anybody know a website where one can view that latest git
>> documentation? Here, "latest" means "latest release" (though being
>> also able to access it for "next" would of course be a nice bonus,
>> likewise for older versions). While I do have those docs on my local
>> machine, I would like to access them online, too (e.g. easier to
>> pointer people at this, I can access it from other machines, etc.).
> 
> How about http://git-htmldocs.googlecode.com/git/ ?
> 
> It's just a directory listing of the git-htmldocs repository that Junio
> maintains - the latest update was yesterday: Autogenerated HTML docs for
> v1.8.1.2-422-g08c0e.
> 
> [I didn't know Google Code let you view the repository like that, but I
> got there by clicking the "raw" link against one of the files so I
> assume it's not likely to go away.]
> 

Thanks John, that looks pretty good!

In addition, I just discovered

   http://manned.org/git-remote-helpers/2b9e4c86

which contains git docs from Arch Linux, Debian, FreeBSD and Ubuntu packages. And since Arch tends to have the latest, so does manned.org. And best, it even lets me browser to older versions of a file.

So, taken together, I guess that solves my problem -- with John's link, I can see the bleeding edge versions, with manned.org the latest released version (as soon as Arch Linux catches up, which seems to be pretty quick :-).


Thanks!
Max

Re: Anybody know a website with up-to-date git documentation?

[Sitaram Chamarty]

On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 7:28 PM, Max Horn <max@quendi.de> wrote:
>
> On 30.01.2013, at 12:54, John Keeping wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 12:46:47PM +0100, Max Horn wrote:
>>> does anybody know a website where one can view that latest git
>>> documentation? Here, "latest" means "latest release" (though being
>>> also able to access it for "next" would of course be a nice bonus,
>>> likewise for older versions). While I do have those docs on my local
>>> machine, I would like to access them online, too (e.g. easier to
>>> pointer people at this, I can access it from other machines, etc.).
>>
>> How about http://git-htmldocs.googlecode.com/git/ ?
>>
>> It's just a directory listing of the git-htmldocs repository that Junio
>> maintains - the latest update was yesterday: Autogenerated HTML docs for
>> v1.8.1.2-422-g08c0e.
>>
>> [I didn't know Google Code let you view the repository like that, but I
>> got there by clicking the "raw" link against one of the files so I
>> assume it's not likely to go away.]
>>
>
> Thanks John, that looks pretty good!
>
> In addition, I just discovered
>
>    http://manned.org/git-remote-helpers/2b9e4c86
>
> which contains git docs from Arch Linux, Debian, FreeBSD and Ubuntu packages. And since Arch tends to have the latest, so does manned.org. And best, it even lets me browser to older versions of a file.
>
> So, taken together, I guess that solves my problem -- with John's link, I can see the bleeding edge versions, with manned.org the latest released version (as soon as Arch Linux catches up, which seems to be pretty quick :-).

I'm curious... what's wrong with 'git checkout html' from the git repo
and just browsing them using a web browser?

Re: Anybody know a website with up-to-date git documentation?

[Junio C Hamano]

Max Horn <max@quendi.de> writes:

> does anybody know a website where one can view that latest git
> documentation? Here, "latest" means "latest release" (though being
> also able to access it for "next" would of course be a nice bonus,
> likewise for older versions).

Preformatted ones for the tip of 'master' are reachable from

    http://git-htmldocs.googlecode.com/git/git.html

Re: Anybody know a website with up-to-date git documentation?

[Max Horn]

On 30.01.2013, at 16:59, Sitaram Chamarty wrote:

> I'm curious... what's wrong with 'git checkout html' from the git repo
> and just browsing them using a web browser?

Hm, do you mean "make html", perhaps? At least I couldn't figure out what "git checkout html" should do, but out of curiosity gave it a try and got an error...

But supposing that you meant "make html": There is nothing "wrong" with it. This is mostly a matter of convenience:

* Many people just use git and don't have the git.git repos (or any git sources) at hand.  And while for many things, older versions of the reference pages may suffice, this is not always the case.

* When I want to point somebody at something specific in the git docs while, say, while discussing on IRC or a mailing list, it is very convenient to point them at a website, like this:
   http://git-htmldocs.googlecode.com/git/git-fast-import.html#_code_notemodify_code 

* Similarly if I am standing physically next to somebody sitting at their computer and they ask me something about git, it is nice to be able to send them to a current version of the docs online

* I can access the web version from my tablet -- and I actually do that (use my tablet as "secondary screen" showing some git refs and other docs while coding on my laptop).

* a website can be update by one person (or ideally: one script) and serve many people with the same need Seems more efficient than each of those people setting up an appropriate clone & a cron job to keep it up-to-date on each machine where they need it.


But of course, the "make html" has its own clear advantages, e.g. I can use it online, I have full control over which exact version of the docs I get, including most recent changes, etc. To me, the two complement each other.


Anyway, I'll stop spamming the list, I got my answers from John and Junio:

  http://git-htmldocs.googlecode.com/git/git.html

and in addition 

  http://manned.org/git.1


Thanks again,
Max

Re: Anybody know a website with up-to-date git documentation?

[Junio C Hamano]

Max Horn <max@quendi.de> writes:

[administrivia: please wrap lines to a reasonable width]

> On 30.01.2013, at 16:59, Sitaram Chamarty wrote:
>
>> I'm curious... what's wrong with 'git checkout html' from the git repo
>> and just browsing them using a web browser?
>
> Hm, do you mean "make html", perhaps? At least I couldn't figure
> out what "git checkout html" should do, but out of curiosity gave
> it a try and got an error...

Perhaps some information from "A note from the maintainer" (posted
to this list from time to time) is lacking.  Some excerpts:

    You can browse the HTML manual pages at:

            http://git-htmldocs.googlecode.com/git/git.html

    Preformatted documentation from the tip of the "master" branch can be
    found in:

            git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git-{htmldocs,manpages}.git/
            git://repo.or.cz/git-{htmldocs,manpages}.git/
            ...


Armed with that knowledge, I think Sitaram may have something like
this:

	[remote "htmldocs"]
		url = git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git-htmldocs.git/
		fetch = +refs/heads/master:refs/heads/html

and does

	git fetch htmldocs
        git checkout html

You can, too, of course ;-)

Re: Anybody know a website with up-to-date git documentation?

[Sitaram Chamarty]

On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 09:18:24AM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> Max Horn <max@quendi.de> writes:
> 
> [administrivia: please wrap lines to a reasonable width]

Curiously, gmail's web interface appears to have started doing
this only recently.  I've noticed it when trying to respond to
others too.

> > On 30.01.2013, at 16:59, Sitaram Chamarty wrote:
> >
> >> I'm curious... what's wrong with 'git checkout html' from the git repo
> >> and just browsing them using a web browser?
> >
> > Hm, do you mean "make html", perhaps? At least I couldn't figure
> > out what "git checkout html" should do, but out of curiosity gave
> > it a try and got an error...
> 
> Perhaps some information from "A note from the maintainer" (posted
> to this list from time to time) is lacking.  Some excerpts:
> 
>     You can browse the HTML manual pages at:
> 
>             http://git-htmldocs.googlecode.com/git/git.html
> 
>     Preformatted documentation from the tip of the "master" branch can be
>     found in:
> 
>             git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git-{htmldocs,manpages}.git/
>             git://repo.or.cz/git-{htmldocs,manpages}.git/
>             ...
> 
> 
> Armed with that knowledge, I think Sitaram may have something like
> this:
> 
> 	[remote "htmldocs"]
> 		url = git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git-htmldocs.git/
> 		fetch = +refs/heads/master:refs/heads/html
> 
> and does
> 
> 	git fetch htmldocs
>         git checkout html

Hmm; I don't recall ever doing that.  But I just realised that
my "html" branch is stuck at 1.7.7:

    $ git branch -v -v | grep html
      html   8fb66e5 [origin/html] Autogenerated HTML docs for v1.7.7-138-g7f41b6

Is it possible that upto that point, the main git.git repo did
carry this branch also?  I have 3 remotes:

    $ git remote -v
    gc	https://code.google.com/p/git-core (fetch)
    gc	https://code.google.com/p/git-core (push)
    ghgit	git://github.com/git/git.git (fetch)
    ghgit	git://github.com/git/git.git (push)
    origin	git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git (fetch)
    origin	git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git (push)

and all 3 of them carry this branch:

    $ git branch -a -v -v | grep html
      html                  8fb66e5 [origin/html] Autogenerated HTML docs for v1.7.7-138-g7f41b6
      remotes/gc/html       8fb66e5 Autogenerated HTML docs for v1.7.7-138-g7f41b6
      remotes/ghgit/html    8fb66e5 Autogenerated HTML docs for v1.7.7-138-g7f41b6
      remotes/origin/html   8fb66e5 Autogenerated HTML docs for v1.7.7-138-g7f41b6

Even if I had, at one point, added a remote specifically for
html, I am sure it could not have created those refs!

So I tried a prune:

    $ git remote update --prune
    Fetching origin
     x [deleted]         (none)     -> origin/html
     x [deleted]         (none)     -> origin/man
    Fetching ghgit
     x [deleted]         (none)     -> ghgit/html
     x [deleted]         (none)     -> ghgit/man
    Fetching gc
     x [deleted]         (none)     -> gc/html
     x [deleted]         (none)     -> gc/man

and now I'm on par with the rest of you ;-)

> You can, too, of course ;-)

You can do even more!  If you don't find a suitable website for
this, it's trivial to host it yourself.  You can host it on your
intranet, if you have one.

Re: Anybody know a website with up-to-date git documentation?

[Drew Northup]

On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 6:07 PM, Sitaram Chamarty <sitaramc@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 09:18:24AM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>> Max Horn <max@quendi.de> writes:
>> > On 30.01.2013, at 16:59, Sitaram Chamarty wrote:
>> >
>> >> I'm curious... what's wrong with 'git checkout html' from the git repo
>> >> and just browsing them using a web browser?

>> Armed with that knowledge, I think Sitaram may have something like
>> this:
>>
>>       [remote "htmldocs"]

> Hmm; I don't recall ever doing that.  But I just realised that
> my "html" branch is stuck at 1.7.7:
>
>     $ git branch -v -v | grep html
>       html   8fb66e5 [origin/html] Autogenerated HTML docs for v1.7.7-138-g7f41b6
>
> Is it possible that upto that point, the main git.git repo did
> carry this branch also?

Yes.

n1xim@atom:~/tmp/git_dev/git$ git branch -a
  dn/utf16_check
* master
  remotes/origin/HEAD -> origin/master
  remotes/origin/html
  remotes/origin/maint
  remotes/origin/man
  remotes/origin/master
  remotes/origin/next
  remotes/origin/pu
  remotes/origin/todo
n1xim@atom:~/tmp/git_dev/git$ git remote show origin
* remote origin
  Fetch URL: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git
  Push  URL: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git
  HEAD branch: master
  Remote branches:
    maint                    tracked
    master                   tracked
    next                     tracked
    pu                       tracked
    refs/remotes/origin/html stale (use 'git remote prune' to remove)
    refs/remotes/origin/man  stale (use 'git remote prune' to remove)
    todo                     tracked
  Local branch configured for 'git pull':
    master merges with remote master
  Local ref configured for 'git push':
    master pushes to master (local out of date)

n1xim@atom:~/tmp/git_dev/git$ git log refs/remotes/origin/html
commit 5723afaf3a61cef537e1f4dfa88f8faf31060ef0
Author: Junio C Hamano <junio@kernel.org>
Date:   Wed Aug 31 00:49:23 2011 +0000

    Autogenerated HTML docs for v1.7.7-rc0-72-g4b5ea

n1xim@atom:~/tmp/git_dev/git$ git log refs/remotes/origin/man
commit e193e4189407968b3c46992e3eac60d38424286e
Author: Junio C Hamano <junio@kernel.org>
Date:   Wed Aug 31 00:49:25 2011 +0000

    Autogenerated manpages for v1.7.7-rc0-72-g4b5ea

....I haven't bothered to plunge and expunge my local repo yet as I
never actually made use of those branches.

-- 
-Drew Northup
--------------------------------------------------------------
"As opposed to vegetable or mineral error?"
-John Pescatore, SANS NewsBites Vol. 12 Num. 59