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] [--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 abbreviated 18object 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--abbrev=<n>:: 35 Instead of using the default 8 hexadecimal digits as the 36 abbreviated object name, use <n> digits. 37 38--candidates=<n>:: 39 Instead of considering only the 10 most recent tags as 40 candidates to describe the input committish consider 41 up to <n> candidates. Increasing <n> above 10 will take 42 slightly longer but may produce a more accurate result. 43 44--debug:: 45 Verbosely display information about the searching strategy 46 being employed to standard error. The tag name will still 47 be printed to standard out. 48 49EXAMPLES 50-------- 51 52With something like git.git current tree, I get: 53 54 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git-describe parent 55 v1.0.4-g2414721b 56 57i.e. the current head of my "parent" branch is based on v1.0.4, 58but since it has a few commits on top of that, it has added the 59git hash of the thing to the end: "-g" + 8-char shorthand for 60the commit `2414721b194453f058079d897d13c4e377f92dc6`. 61 62Doing a "git-describe" on a tag-name will just show the tag name: 63 64 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git-describe v1.0.4 65 v1.0.4 66 67With --all, the command can use branch heads as references, so 68the output shows the reference path as well: 69 70 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --all --abbrev=4 v1.0.5^2 71 tags/v1.0.0-g975b 72 73 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --all HEAD^ 74 heads/lt/describe-g975b 75 76SEARCH STRATEGY 77--------------- 78 79For each committish supplied "git describe" will first look for 80a tag which tags exactly that commit. Annotated tags will always 81be preferred over lightweight tags, and tags with newer dates will 82always be preferred over tags with older dates. If an exact match 83is found, its name will be output and searching will stop. 84 85If an exact match was not found "git describe" will walk back 86through the commit history to locate an ancestor commit which 87has been tagged. The ancestor's tag will be output along with an 88abbreviation of the input committish's SHA1. 89 90If multiple tags were found during the walk then the tag which 91has the fewest commits different from the input committish will be 92selected and output. Here fewest commits different is defined as 93the number of commits which would be shown by "git log tag..input" 94will be the smallest number of commits possible. 95 96 97Author 98------ 99Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>, but somewhat 100butchered by Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net> 101 102Documentation 103-------------- 104Documentation by David Greaves, Junio C Hamano and the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>. 105 106GIT 107--- 108Part of the gitlink:git[7] suite 109