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 The object name of the committish. 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 73EXAMPLES 74-------- 75 76With something like git.git current tree, I get: 77 78 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git-describe parent 79 v1.0.4-14-g2414721 80 81i.e. the current head of my "parent" branch is based on v1.0.4, 82but since it has a handful commits on top of that, 83describe has added the number of additional commits ("14") and 84an abbreviated object name for the commit itself ("2414721") 85at the end. 86 87The number of additional commits is the number 88of commits which would be displayed by "git log v1.0.4..parent". 89The hash suffix is "-g" + 7-char abbreviation for the tip commit 90of parent (which was `2414721b194453f058079d897d13c4e377f92dc6`). 91 92Doing a "git-describe" on a tag-name will just show the tag name: 93 94 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git-describe v1.0.4 95 v1.0.4 96 97With --all, the command can use branch heads as references, so 98the output shows the reference path as well: 99 100 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --all --abbrev=4 v1.0.5^2 101 tags/v1.0.0-21-g975b 102 103 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --all HEAD^ 104 heads/lt/describe-7-g975b 105 106With --abbrev set to 0, the command can be used to find the 107closest tagname without any suffix: 108 109 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --abbrev=0 v1.0.5^2 110 tags/v1.0.0 111 112SEARCH STRATEGY 113--------------- 114 115For each committish supplied "git describe" will first look for 116a tag which tags exactly that commit. Annotated tags will always 117be preferred over lightweight tags, and tags with newer dates will 118always be preferred over tags with older dates. If an exact match 119is found, its name will be output and searching will stop. 120 121If an exact match was not found "git describe" will walk back 122through the commit history to locate an ancestor commit which 123has been tagged. The ancestor's tag will be output along with an 124abbreviation of the input committish's SHA1. 125 126If multiple tags were found during the walk then the tag which 127has the fewest commits different from the input committish will be 128selected and output. Here fewest commits different is defined as 129the number of commits which would be shown by "git log tag..input" 130will be the smallest number of commits possible. 131 132 133Author 134------ 135Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>, but somewhat 136butchered by Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>. Later significantly 137updated by Shawn Pearce <spearce@spearce.org>. 138 139Documentation 140-------------- 141Documentation by David Greaves, Junio C Hamano and the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>. 142 143GIT 144--- 145Part of the linkgit:git[7] suite