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 13DESCRIPTION 14----------- 15The command finds the most recent tag that is reachable from a 16commit. If the tag points to the commit, then only the tag is 17shown. Otherwise, it suffixes the tag name with the number of 18additional commits on top of the tagged object and the 19abbreviated object name of the most recent commit. 20 21 22OPTIONS 23------- 24<committish>...:: 25 Committish object names to describe. 26 27--all:: 28 Instead of using only the annotated tags, use any ref 29 found in `.git/refs/`. 30 31--tags:: 32 Instead of using only the annotated tags, use any tag 33 found in `.git/refs/tags`. 34 35--contains:: 36 Instead of finding the tag that predates the commit, find 37 the tag that comes after the commit, and thus contains it. 38 Automatically implies --tags. 39 40--abbrev=<n>:: 41 Instead of using the default 8 hexadecimal digits as the 42 abbreviated object name, use <n> digits. 43 44--candidates=<n>:: 45 Instead of considering only the 10 most recent tags as 46 candidates to describe the input committish consider 47 up to <n> candidates. Increasing <n> above 10 will take 48 slightly longer but may produce a more accurate result. 49 An <n> of 0 will cause only exact matches to be output. 50 51--exact-match:: 52 Only output exact matches (a tag directly references the 53 supplied commit). This is a synonym for --candidates=0. 54 55--debug:: 56 Verbosely display information about the searching strategy 57 being employed to standard error. The tag name will still 58 be printed to standard out. 59 60--long:: 61 Always output the long format (the tag, the number of commits 62 and the abbreviated commit name) even when it matches a tag. 63 This is useful when you want to see parts of the commit object name 64 in "describe" output, even when the commit in question happens to be 65 a tagged version. Instead of just emitting the tag name, it will 66 describe such a commit as v1.2-0-deadbeef (0th commit since tag v1.2 67 that points at object deadbeef....). 68 69--match <pattern>:: 70 Only consider tags matching the given pattern (can be used to avoid 71 leaking private tags made from the repository). 72 73--always:: 74 Show uniquely abbreviated commit object as fallback. 75 76EXAMPLES 77-------- 78 79With something like git.git current tree, I get: 80 81 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe parent 82 v1.0.4-14-g2414721 83 84i.e. the current head of my "parent" branch is based on v1.0.4, 85but since it has a handful commits on top of that, 86describe has added the number of additional commits ("14") and 87an abbreviated object name for the commit itself ("2414721") 88at the end. 89 90The number of additional commits is the number 91of commits which would be displayed by "git log v1.0.4..parent". 92The hash suffix is "-g" + 7-char abbreviation for the tip commit 93of parent (which was `2414721b194453f058079d897d13c4e377f92dc6`). 94 95Doing a 'git-describe' on a tag-name will just show the tag name: 96 97 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe v1.0.4 98 v1.0.4 99 100With --all, the command can use branch heads as references, so 101the output shows the reference path as well: 102 103 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --all --abbrev=4 v1.0.5^2 104 tags/v1.0.0-21-g975b 105 106 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --all HEAD^ 107 heads/lt/describe-7-g975b 108 109With --abbrev set to 0, the command can be used to find the 110closest tagname without any suffix: 111 112 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --abbrev=0 v1.0.5^2 113 tags/v1.0.0 114 115SEARCH STRATEGY 116--------------- 117 118For each committish supplied, 'git-describe' will first look for 119a tag which tags exactly that commit. Annotated tags will always 120be preferred over lightweight tags, and tags with newer dates will 121always be preferred over tags with older dates. If an exact match 122is found, its name will be output and searching will stop. 123 124If an exact match was not found, 'git-describe' will walk back 125through the commit history to locate an ancestor commit which 126has been tagged. The ancestor's tag will be output along with an 127abbreviation of the input committish's SHA1. 128 129If multiple tags were found during the walk then the tag which 130has the fewest commits different from the input committish will be 131selected and output. Here fewest commits different is defined as 132the number of commits which would be shown by `git log tag..input` 133will be the smallest number of commits possible. 134 135 136Author 137------ 138Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>, but somewhat 139butchered by Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>. Later significantly 140updated by Shawn Pearce <spearce@spearce.org>. 141 142Documentation 143-------------- 144Documentation by David Greaves, Junio C Hamano and the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>. 145 146GIT 147--- 148Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite