git help command broken in 1.7.11

[patthoyts]

The git help and git --help mechanism is broken in Git 1.7.11

C:\Program Files (x86)\Git\libexec>git help clone
warning: failed to exec 'man': No such file or directory
fatal: no man viewer handled the request

The underlying web-page launcher is ok - for some reason we are looking for 'man' instead of web--browse to show the help.

[patthoyts]

Git for Windows uses a system config /help.format/ to specify that the default help viewer should be the web browser. git config --get help.format returns html as expected so something has changed in the git-help command. It looks like commit 1cc8af0 "help: use HTML as the default help format on Windows" is a likely candidate and has possibly broken the use of the config option.

[patthoyts]

This can be fixed by setting a new value in the Makefile to set the compiled default to html for msys builds. A separate fix to go to upstream git will also restore the use of the help.format config variable.

[svick]

Thanks, 68b7ef2 fixed this for me.

[sschuberth]

The fix is included in version 1.7.11-preview20120704.