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