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 39EXAMPLES 40-------- 41 42With something like git.git current tree, I get: 43 44 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git-describe parent 45 v1.0.4-g2414721b 46 47i.e. the current head of my "parent" branch is based on v1.0.4, 48but since it has a few commits on top of that, it has added the 49git hash of the thing to the end: "-g" + 8-char shorthand for 50the commit `2414721b194453f058079d897d13c4e377f92dc6`. 51 52Doing a "git-describe" on a tag-name will just show the tag name: 53 54 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git-describe v1.0.4 55 v1.0.4 56 57With --all, the command can use branch heads as references, so 58the output shows the reference path as well: 59 60 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --all --abbrev=4 v1.0.5^2 61 tags/v1.0.0-g975b 62 63 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --all HEAD^ 64 heads/lt/describe-g975b 65 66 67Author 68------ 69Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>, but somewhat 70butchered by Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net> 71 72Documentation 73-------------- 74Documentation by David Greaves, Junio C Hamano and the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>. 75 76GIT 77--- 78Part of the gitlink:git[7] suite 79