Developer Documentation#

Welcome to GitHelp#

Learn Git faster, directly from your terminal, with friendly tips and optional AI powered explanations.

Description#

Githelp is a command line tool designed to help CSC311 student understand and remember Git commands, while working through git. Instead of searching the web every time, you forget what git status or git rebase does, you can ask Githelp inside the terminal.

GitHelp reads from a set of tips which are stored in a YAML file and can also use an AI model (llama2 one of Ollama model) to generate a more detail explanations when available. Whether you’re just starting with Git or brushing up on specific commands, GitHelp can help you on the fly.

With a focus on clarity, GitHelp aims to reduce frustration, support learning by doing, and make Git feel less intimidating.

Installation#

You can start cloning to work locally or download directly from github.

By clone#

You can clone first

git clone https://github.com/compsys-progtools/githelp.git

and then install

pip install githelp

(If you are using pip3)

pip3 install githelp

For development purposes, you may want to install with pip’s -e option

pip install -e .

To update, pull and install again.

The main use is as a CLI, for a list of all commands see the CLI page.

Structures#

  1. CLI using Click library

    • Implements the githelp command and subcommands (list, explain, save, and etc…).

    • Handles parsing arguments, options, and routing to the right functions.

    • Click’s library documentation

  2. tips.yml and the Yaml Library

    • A YAML file that stores tip data in a dictionary format for each Git subcommand and can be found inside the data directory.

    • Each entry contains a summary, when_to_use, and examples.

    • yaml’s library documentation

  3. Rendering layer

    • Functions that take the dictionaries and convert them into readable text for the terminal (Example - render_overlay, render_menu in overlays.py).

  4. AI integration

    • When parsing the cmd githelp explain <subcommand> GitHelp calls a helper function to query the llama2.

    • If anything fails (Ollama not installed, model missing, network error), GitHelp falls back to the standard tips(tips.yml).

    • The model’s prompts can be changed to developer’s preference.

    • The model’s prompts in this are specialized for particular command.

    • The model can also be changed to developer’s preference, however the current default is set to llama2