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