1git-describe(1) 2=============== 3 4NAME 5---- 6git-describe - Show the most recent tag that is reachable from a commit 7 8 9SYNOPSIS 10-------- 11'git describe' [--all] [--tags] [--contains] [--abbrev=<n>] <committish>... 12'git describe' [--all] [--tags] [--contains] [--abbrev=<n>] --dirty[=<mark>] 13 14DESCRIPTION 15----------- 16The command finds the most recent tag that is reachable from a 17commit. If the tag points to the commit, then only the tag is 18shown. Otherwise, it suffixes the tag name with the number of 19additional commits on top of the tagged object and the 20abbreviated object name of the most recent commit. 21 22By default (without --all or --tags) `git describe` only shows 23annotated tags. For more information about creating annotated tags 24see the -a and -s options to linkgit:git-tag[1]. 25 26OPTIONS 27------- 28<committish>...:: 29 Committish object names to describe. 30 31--dirty[=<mark>]:: 32 Describe the working tree. 33 It means describe HEAD and appends <mark> (`-dirty` by 34 default) if the working tree is dirty. 35 36--all:: 37 Instead of using only the annotated tags, use any ref 38 found in `.git/refs/`. This option enables matching 39 any known branch, remote branch, or lightweight tag. 40 41--tags:: 42 Instead of using only the annotated tags, use any tag 43 found in `.git/refs/tags`. This option enables matching 44 a lightweight (non-annotated) tag. 45 46--contains:: 47 Instead of finding the tag that predates the commit, find 48 the tag that comes after the commit, and thus contains it. 49 Automatically implies --tags. 50 51--abbrev=<n>:: 52 Instead of using the default 7 hexadecimal digits as the 53 abbreviated object name, use <n> digits, or as many digits 54 as needed to form a unique object name. An <n> of 0 55 will suppress long format, only showing the closest tag. 56 57--candidates=<n>:: 58 Instead of considering only the 10 most recent tags as 59 candidates to describe the input committish consider 60 up to <n> candidates. Increasing <n> above 10 will take 61 slightly longer but may produce a more accurate result. 62 An <n> of 0 will cause only exact matches to be output. 63 64--exact-match:: 65 Only output exact matches (a tag directly references the 66 supplied commit). This is a synonym for --candidates=0. 67 68--debug:: 69 Verbosely display information about the searching strategy 70 being employed to standard error. The tag name will still 71 be printed to standard out. 72 73--long:: 74 Always output the long format (the tag, the number of commits 75 and the abbreviated commit name) even when it matches a tag. 76 This is useful when you want to see parts of the commit object name 77 in "describe" output, even when the commit in question happens to be 78 a tagged version. Instead of just emitting the tag name, it will 79 describe such a commit as v1.2-0-gdeadbee (0th commit since tag v1.2 80 that points at object deadbee....). 81 82--match <pattern>:: 83 Only consider tags matching the given pattern (can be used to avoid 84 leaking private tags made from the repository). 85 86--always:: 87 Show uniquely abbreviated commit object as fallback. 88 89EXAMPLES 90-------- 91 92With something like git.git current tree, I get: 93 94 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe parent 95 v1.0.4-14-g2414721 96 97i.e. the current head of my "parent" branch is based on v1.0.4, 98but since it has a few commits on top of that, 99describe has added the number of additional commits ("14") and 100an abbreviated object name for the commit itself ("2414721") 101at the end. 102 103The number of additional commits is the number 104of commits which would be displayed by "git log v1.0.4..parent". 105The hash suffix is "-g" + 7-char abbreviation for the tip commit 106of parent (which was `2414721b194453f058079d897d13c4e377f92dc6`). 107 108Doing a 'git-describe' on a tag-name will just show the tag name: 109 110 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe v1.0.4 111 v1.0.4 112 113With --all, the command can use branch heads as references, so 114the output shows the reference path as well: 115 116 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --all --abbrev=4 v1.0.5^2 117 tags/v1.0.0-21-g975b 118 119 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --all --abbrev=4 HEAD^ 120 heads/lt/describe-7-g975b 121 122With --abbrev set to 0, the command can be used to find the 123closest tagname without any suffix: 124 125 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --abbrev=0 v1.0.5^2 126 tags/v1.0.0 127 128Note that the suffix you get if you type these commands today may be 129longer than what Linus saw above when he ran these commands, as your 130git repository may have new commits whose object names begin with 131975b that did not exist back then, and "-g975b" suffix alone may not 132be sufficient to disambiguate these commits. 133 134 135SEARCH STRATEGY 136--------------- 137 138For each committish supplied, 'git-describe' will first look for 139a tag which tags exactly that commit. Annotated tags will always 140be preferred over lightweight tags, and tags with newer dates will 141always be preferred over tags with older dates. If an exact match 142is found, its name will be output and searching will stop. 143 144If an exact match was not found, 'git-describe' will walk back 145through the commit history to locate an ancestor commit which 146has been tagged. The ancestor's tag will be output along with an 147abbreviation of the input committish's SHA1. 148 149If multiple tags were found during the walk then the tag which 150has the fewest commits different from the input committish will be 151selected and output. Here fewest commits different is defined as 152the number of commits which would be shown by `git log tag..input` 153will be the smallest number of commits possible. 154 155 156Author 157------ 158Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>, but somewhat 159butchered by Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>. Later significantly 160updated by Shawn Pearce <spearce@spearce.org>. 161 162Documentation 163-------------- 164Documentation by David Greaves, Junio C Hamano and the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>. 165 166GIT 167--- 168Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite