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'git describe' [--all] [--tags] [--contains] [--abbrev=<n>] --dirty[=<mark>] 13 14DESCRIPTION 15----------- 16The command finds the most recent tag that is reachable from a 17commit. If the tag points to the commit, then only the tag is 18shown. Otherwise, it suffixes the tag name with the number of 19additional commits on top of the tagged object and the 20abbreviated object name of the most recent commit. 21 22By default (without --all or --tags) `git describe` only shows 23annotated tags. For more information about creating annotated tags 24see the -a and -s options to linkgit:git-tag[1]. 25 26OPTIONS 27------- 28<committish>...:: 29 Committish object names to describe. 30 31--dirty[=<mark>]:: 32 Describe the working tree. 33 It means describe HEAD and appends <mark> (`-dirty` by 34 default) if the working tree is dirty. 35 36--all:: 37 Instead of using only the annotated tags, use any ref 38 found in `.git/refs/`. This option enables matching 39 any known branch, remote branch, or lightweight tag. 40 41--tags:: 42 Instead of using only the annotated tags, use any tag 43 found in `.git/refs/tags`. This option enables matching 44 a lightweight (non-annotated) tag. 45 46--contains:: 47 Instead of finding the tag that predates the commit, find 48 the tag that comes after the commit, and thus contains it. 49 Automatically implies --tags. 50 51--abbrev=<n>:: 52 Instead of using the default 7 hexadecimal digits as the 53 abbreviated object name, use <n> digits. 54 55--candidates=<n>:: 56 Instead of considering only the 10 most recent tags as 57 candidates to describe the input committish consider 58 up to <n> candidates. Increasing <n> above 10 will take 59 slightly longer but may produce a more accurate result. 60 An <n> of 0 will cause only exact matches to be output. 61 62--exact-match:: 63 Only output exact matches (a tag directly references the 64 supplied commit). This is a synonym for --candidates=0. 65 66--debug:: 67 Verbosely display information about the searching strategy 68 being employed to standard error. The tag name will still 69 be printed to standard out. 70 71--long:: 72 Always output the long format (the tag, the number of commits 73 and the abbreviated commit name) even when it matches a tag. 74 This is useful when you want to see parts of the commit object name 75 in "describe" output, even when the commit in question happens to be 76 a tagged version. Instead of just emitting the tag name, it will 77 describe such a commit as v1.2-0-deadbeef (0th commit since tag v1.2 78 that points at object deadbeef....). 79 80--match <pattern>:: 81 Only consider tags matching the given pattern (can be used to avoid 82 leaking private tags made from the repository). 83 84--always:: 85 Show uniquely abbreviated commit object as fallback. 86 87EXAMPLES 88-------- 89 90With something like git.git current tree, I get: 91 92 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe parent 93 v1.0.4-14-g2414721 94 95i.e. the current head of my "parent" branch is based on v1.0.4, 96but since it has a few commits on top of that, 97describe has added the number of additional commits ("14") and 98an abbreviated object name for the commit itself ("2414721") 99at the end. 100 101The number of additional commits is the number 102of commits which would be displayed by "git log v1.0.4..parent". 103The hash suffix is "-g" + 7-char abbreviation for the tip commit 104of parent (which was `2414721b194453f058079d897d13c4e377f92dc6`). 105 106Doing a 'git-describe' on a tag-name will just show the tag name: 107 108 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe v1.0.4 109 v1.0.4 110 111With --all, the command can use branch heads as references, so 112the output shows the reference path as well: 113 114 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --all --abbrev=4 v1.0.5^2 115 tags/v1.0.0-21-g975b 116 117 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --all HEAD^ 118 heads/lt/describe-7-g975b 119 120With --abbrev set to 0, the command can be used to find the 121closest tagname without any suffix: 122 123 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --abbrev=0 v1.0.5^2 124 tags/v1.0.0 125 126SEARCH STRATEGY 127--------------- 128 129For each committish supplied, 'git-describe' will first look for 130a tag which tags exactly that commit. Annotated tags will always 131be preferred over lightweight tags, and tags with newer dates will 132always be preferred over tags with older dates. If an exact match 133is found, its name will be output and searching will stop. 134 135If an exact match was not found, 'git-describe' will walk back 136through the commit history to locate an ancestor commit which 137has been tagged. The ancestor's tag will be output along with an 138abbreviation of the input committish's SHA1. 139 140If multiple tags were found during the walk then the tag which 141has the fewest commits different from the input committish will be 142selected and output. Here fewest commits different is defined as 143the number of commits which would be shown by `git log tag..input` 144will be the smallest number of commits possible. 145 146 147Author 148------ 149Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>, but somewhat 150butchered by Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>. Later significantly 151updated by Shawn Pearce <spearce@spearce.org>. 152 153Documentation 154-------------- 155Documentation by David Greaves, Junio C Hamano and the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>. 156 157GIT 158--- 159Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite