SYNOPSIS
--------
-'git-describe' [--all] [--tags] [--contains] [--abbrev=<n>] <committish>...
+'git describe' [--all] [--tags] [--contains] [--abbrev=<n>] <committish>...
DESCRIPTION
-----------
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
-------
-<committish>::
- The object name of the committish.
+<committish>...::
+ Committish object names to describe.
--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
Automatically implies --tags.
--abbrev=<n>::
- Instead of using the default 8 hexadecimal digits as the
- abbreviated object name, use <n> digits.
+ Instead of using the default 7 hexadecimal digits as the
+ 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
With something like git.git current tree, I get:
- [torvalds@g5 git]$ git-describe parent
+ [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe parent
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.
The hash suffix is "-g" + 7-char abbreviation for the tip commit
of parent (which was `2414721b194453f058079d897d13c4e377f92dc6`).
-Doing a "git-describe" on a tag-name will just show the tag name:
+Doing a 'git-describe' on a tag-name will just show the tag name:
- [torvalds@g5 git]$ git-describe v1.0.4
+ [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe v1.0.4
v1.0.4
With --all, the command can use branch heads as references, so
[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.
+
+
SEARCH STRATEGY
---------------
-For each committish supplied "git describe" will first look for
+For each committish supplied, 'git-describe' will first look for
a tag which tags exactly that commit. Annotated tags will always
be preferred over lightweight tags, and tags with newer dates will
always be preferred over tags with older dates. If an exact match
is found, its name will be output and searching will stop.
-If an exact match was not found "git describe" will walk back
+If an exact match was not found, 'git-describe' will walk back
through the commit history to locate an ancestor commit which
has been tagged. The ancestor's tag will be output along with an
abbreviation of the input committish's SHA1.
If multiple tags were found during the walk then the tag which
has the fewest commits different from the input committish will be
selected and output. Here fewest commits different is defined as
-the number of commits which would be shown by "git log tag..input"
+the number of commits which would be shown by `git log tag..input`
will be the smallest number of commits possible.