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[verse] 12'git describe' [--all] [--tags] [--contains] [--abbrev=<n>] <committish>... 13'git describe' [--all] [--tags] [--contains] [--abbrev=<n>] --dirty[=<mark>] 14 15DESCRIPTION 16----------- 17The command finds the most recent tag that is reachable from a 18commit. If the tag points to the commit, then only the tag is 19shown. Otherwise, it suffixes the tag name with the number of 20additional commits on top of the tagged object and the 21abbreviated object name of the most recent commit. 22 23By default (without --all or --tags) `git describe` only shows 24annotated tags. For more information about creating annotated tags 25see the -a and -s options to linkgit:git-tag[1]. 26 27OPTIONS 28------- 29<committish>...:: 30 Committish object names to describe. 31 32--dirty[=<mark>]:: 33 Describe the working tree. 34 It means describe HEAD and appends <mark> (`-dirty` by 35 default) if the working tree is dirty. 36 37--all:: 38 Instead of using only the annotated tags, use any ref 39 found in `.git/refs/`. This option enables matching 40 any known branch, remote-tracking branch, or lightweight tag. 41 42--tags:: 43 Instead of using only the annotated tags, use any tag 44 found in `.git/refs/tags`. This option enables matching 45 a lightweight (non-annotated) tag. 46 47--contains:: 48 Instead of finding the tag that predates the commit, find 49 the tag that comes after the commit, and thus contains it. 50 Automatically implies --tags. 51 52--abbrev=<n>:: 53 Instead of using the default 7 hexadecimal digits as the 54 abbreviated object name, use <n> digits, or as many digits 55 as needed to form a unique object name. An <n> of 0 56 will suppress long format, only showing the closest tag. 57 58--candidates=<n>:: 59 Instead of considering only the 10 most recent tags as 60 candidates to describe the input committish consider 61 up to <n> candidates. Increasing <n> above 10 will take 62 slightly longer but may produce a more accurate result. 63 An <n> of 0 will cause only exact matches to be output. 64 65--exact-match:: 66 Only output exact matches (a tag directly references the 67 supplied commit). This is a synonym for --candidates=0. 68 69--debug:: 70 Verbosely display information about the searching strategy 71 being employed to standard error. The tag name will still 72 be printed to standard out. 73 74--long:: 75 Always output the long format (the tag, the number of commits 76 and the abbreviated commit name) even when it matches a tag. 77 This is useful when you want to see parts of the commit object name 78 in "describe" output, even when the commit in question happens to be 79 a tagged version. Instead of just emitting the tag name, it will 80 describe such a commit as v1.2-0-gdeadbee (0th commit since tag v1.2 81 that points at object deadbee....). 82 83--match <pattern>:: 84 Only consider tags matching the given pattern (can be used to avoid 85 leaking private tags made from the repository). 86 87--always:: 88 Show uniquely abbreviated commit object as fallback. 89 90EXAMPLES 91-------- 92 93With something like git.git current tree, I get: 94 95 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe parent 96 v1.0.4-14-g2414721 97 98i.e. the current head of my "parent" branch is based on v1.0.4, 99but since it has a few commits on top of that, 100describe has added the number of additional commits ("14") and 101an abbreviated object name for the commit itself ("2414721") 102at the end. 103 104The number of additional commits is the number 105of commits which would be displayed by "git log v1.0.4..parent". 106The hash suffix is "-g" + 7-char abbreviation for the tip commit 107of parent (which was `2414721b194453f058079d897d13c4e377f92dc6`). 108The "g" prefix stands for "git" and is used to allow describing the version of 109a software depending on the SCM the software is managed with. This is useful 110in an environment where people may use different SCMs. 111 112Doing a 'git describe' on a tag-name will just show the tag name: 113 114 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe v1.0.4 115 v1.0.4 116 117With --all, the command can use branch heads as references, so 118the output shows the reference path as well: 119 120 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --all --abbrev=4 v1.0.5^2 121 tags/v1.0.0-21-g975b 122 123 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --all --abbrev=4 HEAD^ 124 heads/lt/describe-7-g975b 125 126With --abbrev set to 0, the command can be used to find the 127closest tagname without any suffix: 128 129 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --abbrev=0 v1.0.5^2 130 tags/v1.0.0 131 132Note that the suffix you get if you type these commands today may be 133longer than what Linus saw above when he ran these commands, as your 134git repository may have new commits whose object names begin with 135975b that did not exist back then, and "-g975b" suffix alone may not 136be sufficient to disambiguate these commits. 137 138 139SEARCH STRATEGY 140--------------- 141 142For each committish supplied, 'git describe' will first look for 143a tag which tags exactly that commit. Annotated tags will always 144be preferred over lightweight tags, and tags with newer dates will 145always be preferred over tags with older dates. If an exact match 146is found, its name will be output and searching will stop. 147 148If an exact match was not found, 'git describe' will walk back 149through the commit history to locate an ancestor commit which 150has been tagged. The ancestor's tag will be output along with an 151abbreviation of the input committish's SHA1. 152 153If multiple tags were found during the walk then the tag which 154has the fewest commits different from the input committish will be 155selected and output. Here fewest commits different is defined as 156the number of commits which would be shown by `git log tag..input` 157will be the smallest number of commits possible. 158 159 160Author 161------ 162Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>, but somewhat 163butchered by Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>. Later significantly 164updated by Shawn Pearce <spearce@spearce.org>. 165 166Documentation 167-------------- 168Documentation by David Greaves, Junio C Hamano and the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>. 169 170GIT 171--- 172Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite