Re: git help error

Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] writes:

Sergei Organov [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

"Aneesh Kumar" [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

git help gives me the below error.

[master@git]$ git help add
No manual entry for git-add
See 'man 7 undocumented' for help when manual pages are not available.
[master@git]$

I have the git binaries installed via --prefix

./configure --prefix=/home/kvaneesh/bin-local/git/
and to see the man page i have to say

man -M /home/kvaneesh/bin-local/git/share/man/

...
When you run "man" from the command line, can you say

     $ man git-add

and make it work?  If it fails the same way, then what you are missing
is MANPATH environment variable, isn't it?

I think what the OP asked for makes sense. git-help should better find
corresponding version of manual pages automatically. This way, if one
invokes different versions of git-help, he will get corresponding
version of help text.

I do not necessarily agree.  Read what Aneesh wrote originally again,
and read what he _didn't_ write.

Not only he needs to run his "man" with -M (and my point was that it is
not the only way, by the way), he needs to futz with his $PATH to
include $HOME/bin-local/git for _his_ installation to work.

My point is that he doesn't need to tweak his $PATH, because he can
simply say:

$ ~/bin-local/git/bin/git help add

Then, I'd expect that the manual page that is installed along with the
version that

$ ~/bin-local/git/bin/git --version

reports is displayed, not any random version of git-add manual page
found using default 'man' rules.

I think my suggestion to use $MANPATH is in line with what he is already
doing.  If you install things in non-standard places, you can use
environments to adjust to what you did, and that's the reason PATH and
MANPATH environments are supported by your tools.

Yes, but provided you have more than one version of git installed, it's
inconvenient to tweak both PATH and MANPATH to use one or another. It
would be more convenient and consistent if

$ ~/git.old/bin/git help add
$ ~/git.new/bin/git help add

were render different versions of git-add manual page, each
corresponding to the right version of git.

Having said that, I do not mind accepting a patch that prepends the
nonlocal path to MANPATH in help.c::show_man_page().

OK, patch will follow shortly.

-- 
Sergei.