Merge branch 'js/diff-verbose-submodule'

diff --git a/Documentation/git-describe.txt b/Documentation/git-describe.txt
index 59a6fd17ab3566986aa2f4b12b2ce034aa2c5a97..e9dbca7d87bade4126cd45477b69478894518168 100644 (file)
--- a/Documentation/git-describe.txt
+++ b/Documentation/git-describe.txt
@@ -18,6 +18,9 @@ shown.  Otherwise, it suffixes the tag name with the number of
 additional commits on top of the tagged object and the
 abbreviated object name of the most recent commit.
 
+By default (without --all or --tags) `git describe` only shows
+annotated tags.  For more information about creating annotated tags
+see the -a and -s options to linkgit:git-tag[1].
 
 OPTIONS
 -------
@@ -26,11 +29,13 @@ OPTIONS
 
 --all::
        Instead of using only the annotated tags, use any ref
-       found in `.git/refs/`.
+       found in `.git/refs/`.  This option enables matching
+       any known branch, remote branch, or lightweight tag.
 
 --tags::
        Instead of using only the annotated tags, use any tag
-       found in `.git/refs/tags`.
+       found in `.git/refs/tags`.  This option enables matching
+       a lightweight (non-annotated) tag.
 
 --contains::
        Instead of finding the tag that predates the commit, find
@@ -39,7 +44,9 @@ OPTIONS
 
 --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
@@ -63,8 +70,8 @@ OPTIONS
        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
@@ -82,7 +89,7 @@ With something like git.git current tree, I get:
        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.
@@ -103,7 +110,7 @@ the output shows the reference path as well:
        [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
@@ -112,6 +119,13 @@ closest tagname without any suffix:
        [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 this command, 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.
+
+
 SEARCH STRATEGY
 ---------------