Git for Windows wasn’t finding my web browser for launching help pages. The HTML was launched in Notepad.
First I made sure that the help should be launching as web pages. This is the default on Windows anyway as neither an info nor a man viewer are available.
$ git config --global help.format web
I tried tracing what was happening:
$ GIT_TRACE=1 git stash --help
trace: built-in: git 'help' 'stash'
Launching default browser to display HTML ...
Not enough information. I tried to use the web–browse script explicitly:
$ GIT_TRACE=1 git web--browse --browser=chrome 'http://news.bbc.co.uk/'
trace: exec: 'git-web--browse' '--browser=chrome' 'http://news.bbc.co.uk/'
trace: run_command: 'git-web--browse' '--browser=chrome' 'http://news.bbc.co.uk/'
trace: built-in: git 'config' 'browser.chrome.path'
The browser chrome is not available as 'chrome'.
Looks like the script couldn’t find my web browser:
$ git config --global browser.chrome.path "C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe"
No joy. I tried Doug Knox’s Windows XP File Association Fixes for HTM/HTML Associations. Nope.
Finally I went to the files in Git\doc\git\html and opened the Properties for one of the .html files and set the ‘Opens with:’ to Chrome. Joy!
So I can’t be sure exactly what worked here. I changed the git config to work with Firefox and the file ‘Opens with:’ to Firefox and it still worked. I’ve not repeated it with IE because, well, you wouldn’t, would you?
EscApologist 