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--long:: 60 Always output the long format (the tag, the number of commits 61 and the abbreviated commit name) even when it matches a tag. 62 This is useful when you want to see parts of the commit object name 63 in "describe" output, even when the commit in question happens to be 64 a tagged version. Instead of just emitting the tag name, it will 65 describe such a commit as v1.2-0-deadbeef (0th commit since tag v1.2 66 that points at object deadbeef....). 67 68--match <pattern>:: 69 Only consider tags matching the given pattern (can be used to avoid 70 leaking private tags made from the repository). 71 72EXAMPLES 73-------- 74 75With something like git.git current tree, I get: 76 77 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git-describe parent 78 v1.0.4-14-g2414721 79 80i.e. the current head of my "parent" branch is based on v1.0.4, 81but since it has a handful commits on top of that, 82describe has added the number of additional commits ("14") and 83an abbreviated object name for the commit itself ("2414721") 84at the end. 85 86The number of additional commits is the number 87of commits which would be displayed by "git log v1.0.4..parent". 88The hash suffix is "-g" + 7-char abbreviation for the tip commit 89of parent (which was `2414721b194453f058079d897d13c4e377f92dc6`). 90 91Doing a "git-describe" on a tag-name will just show the tag name: 92 93 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git-describe v1.0.4 94 v1.0.4 95 96With --all, the command can use branch heads as references, so 97the output shows the reference path as well: 98 99 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --all --abbrev=4 v1.0.5^2 100 tags/v1.0.0-21-g975b 101 102 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --all HEAD^ 103 heads/lt/describe-7-g975b 104 105With --abbrev set to 0, the command can be used to find the 106closest tagname without any suffix: 107 108 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --abbrev=0 v1.0.5^2 109 tags/v1.0.0 110 111SEARCH STRATEGY 112--------------- 113 114For each committish supplied "git describe" will first look for 115a tag which tags exactly that commit. Annotated tags will always 116be preferred over lightweight tags, and tags with newer dates will 117always be preferred over tags with older dates. If an exact match 118is found, its name will be output and searching will stop. 119 120If an exact match was not found "git describe" will walk back 121through the commit history to locate an ancestor commit which 122has been tagged. The ancestor's tag will be output along with an 123abbreviation of the input committish's SHA1. 124 125If multiple tags were found during the walk then the tag which 126has the fewest commits different from the input committish will be 127selected and output. Here fewest commits different is defined as 128the number of commits which would be shown by "git log tag..input" 129will be the smallest number of commits possible. 130 131 132Author 133------ 134Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>, but somewhat 135butchered by Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>. Later significantly 136updated by Shawn Pearce <spearce@spearce.org>. 137 138Documentation 139-------------- 140Documentation by David Greaves, Junio C Hamano and the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>. 141 142GIT 143--- 144Part of the linkgit:git[7] suite