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 49--debug:: 50 Verbosely display information about the searching strategy 51 being employed to standard error. The tag name will still 52 be printed to standard out. 53 54EXAMPLES 55-------- 56 57With something like git.git current tree, I get: 58 59 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git-describe parent 60 v1.0.4-14-g2414721 61 62i.e. the current head of my "parent" branch is based on v1.0.4, 63but since it has a handful commits on top of that, 64describe has added the number of additional commits ("14") and 65an abbreviated object name for the commit itself ("2414721") 66at the end. 67 68The number of additional commits is the number 69of commits which would be displayed by "git log v1.0.4..parent". 70The hash suffix is "-g" + 7-char abbreviation for the tip commit 71of parent (which was `2414721b194453f058079d897d13c4e377f92dc6`). 72 73Doing a "git-describe" on a tag-name will just show the tag name: 74 75 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git-describe v1.0.4 76 v1.0.4 77 78With --all, the command can use branch heads as references, so 79the output shows the reference path as well: 80 81 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --all --abbrev=4 v1.0.5^2 82 tags/v1.0.0-21-g975b 83 84 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --all HEAD^ 85 heads/lt/describe-7-g975b 86 87With --abbrev set to 0, the command can be used to find the 88closest tagname without any suffix: 89 90 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --abbrev=0 v1.0.5^2 91 tags/v1.0.0 92 93SEARCH STRATEGY 94--------------- 95 96For each committish supplied "git describe" will first look for 97a tag which tags exactly that commit. Annotated tags will always 98be preferred over lightweight tags, and tags with newer dates will 99always be preferred over tags with older dates. If an exact match 100is found, its name will be output and searching will stop. 101 102If an exact match was not found "git describe" will walk back 103through the commit history to locate an ancestor commit which 104has been tagged. The ancestor's tag will be output along with an 105abbreviation of the input committish's SHA1. 106 107If multiple tags were found during the walk then the tag which 108has the fewest commits different from the input committish will be 109selected and output. Here fewest commits different is defined as 110the number of commits which would be shown by "git log tag..input" 111will be the smallest number of commits possible. 112 113 114Author 115------ 116Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>, but somewhat 117butchered by Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>. Later significantly 118updated by Shawn Pearce <spearce@spearce.org>. 119 120Documentation 121-------------- 122Documentation by David Greaves, Junio C Hamano and the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>. 123 124GIT 125--- 126Part of the linkgit:git[7] suite