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 49--debug:: 50 Verbosely display information about the searching strategy 51 being employed to standard error. The tag name will still 52 be printed to standard out. 53 54--match <pattern>:: 55 Only consider tags matching the given pattern (can be used to avoid 56 leaking private tags made from the repository). 57 58EXAMPLES 59-------- 60 61With something like git.git current tree, I get: 62 63 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git-describe parent 64 v1.0.4-14-g2414721 65 66i.e. the current head of my "parent" branch is based on v1.0.4, 67but since it has a handful commits on top of that, 68describe has added the number of additional commits ("14") and 69an abbreviated object name for the commit itself ("2414721") 70at the end. 71 72The number of additional commits is the number 73of commits which would be displayed by "git log v1.0.4..parent". 74The hash suffix is "-g" + 7-char abbreviation for the tip commit 75of parent (which was `2414721b194453f058079d897d13c4e377f92dc6`). 76 77Doing a "git-describe" on a tag-name will just show the tag name: 78 79 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git-describe v1.0.4 80 v1.0.4 81 82With --all, the command can use branch heads as references, so 83the output shows the reference path as well: 84 85 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --all --abbrev=4 v1.0.5^2 86 tags/v1.0.0-21-g975b 87 88 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --all HEAD^ 89 heads/lt/describe-7-g975b 90 91With --abbrev set to 0, the command can be used to find the 92closest tagname without any suffix: 93 94 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --abbrev=0 v1.0.5^2 95 tags/v1.0.0 96 97SEARCH STRATEGY 98--------------- 99 100For each committish supplied "git describe" will first look for 101a tag which tags exactly that commit. Annotated tags will always 102be preferred over lightweight tags, and tags with newer dates will 103always be preferred over tags with older dates. If an exact match 104is found, its name will be output and searching will stop. 105 106If an exact match was not found "git describe" will walk back 107through the commit history to locate an ancestor commit which 108has been tagged. The ancestor's tag will be output along with an 109abbreviation of the input committish's SHA1. 110 111If multiple tags were found during the walk then the tag which 112has the fewest commits different from the input committish will be 113selected and output. Here fewest commits different is defined as 114the number of commits which would be shown by "git log tag..input" 115will be the smallest number of commits possible. 116 117 118Author 119------ 120Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>, but somewhat 121butchered by Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>. Later significantly 122updated by Shawn Pearce <spearce@spearce.org>. 123 124Documentation 125-------------- 126Documentation by David Greaves, Junio C Hamano and the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>. 127 128GIT 129--- 130Part of the linkgit:git[7] suite