--abbrev=<n>::
Instead of using the default 7 hexadecimal digits as the
- abbreviated object name, use <n> digits.
+ abbreviated object name, use <n> digits, or as many digits
+ as needed to form a unique object name. An <n> of 0
+ will suppress long format, only showing the closest tag.
--candidates=<n>::
Instead of considering only the 10 most recent tags as
This is useful when you want to see parts of the commit object name
in "describe" output, even when the commit in question happens to be
a tagged version. Instead of just emitting the tag name, it will
- describe such a commit as v1.2-0-deadbeef (0th commit since tag v1.2
- that points at object deadbeef....).
+ describe such a commit as v1.2-0-gdeadbee (0th commit since tag v1.2
+ that points at object deadbee....).
--match <pattern>::
Only consider tags matching the given pattern (can be used to avoid
v1.0.4-14-g2414721
i.e. the current head of my "parent" branch is based on v1.0.4,
-but since it has a handful commits on top of that,
+but since it has a few commits on top of that,
describe has added the number of additional commits ("14") and
an abbreviated object name for the commit itself ("2414721")
at the end.
[torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --all --abbrev=4 v1.0.5^2
tags/v1.0.0-21-g975b
- [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --all HEAD^
+ [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --all --abbrev=4 HEAD^
heads/lt/describe-7-g975b
With --abbrev set to 0, the command can be used to find the
[torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --abbrev=0 v1.0.5^2
tags/v1.0.0
+Note that the suffix you get if you type these commands today may be
+longer than what Linus saw above when he ran these commands, as your
+git repository may have new commits whose object names begin with
+975b that did not exist back then, and "-g975b" suffix alone may not
+be sufficient to disambiguate these commits.
+
+
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