--all::
Instead of using only the annotated tags, use any ref
- found in `.git/refs/`. This option enables matching
- any known branch, remote branch, or lightweight tag.
+ found in `refs/` namespace. This option enables matching
+ any known branch, remote-tracking branch, or lightweight tag.
--tags::
Instead of using only the annotated tags, use any tag
- found in `.git/refs/tags`. This option enables matching
+ found in `refs/tags` namespace. This option enables matching
a lightweight (non-annotated) tag.
--contains::
that points at object deadbee....).
--match <pattern>::
- Only consider tags matching the given pattern (can be used to avoid
- leaking private tags made from the repository).
+ Only consider tags matching the given `glob(7)` pattern,
+ excluding the "refs/tags/" prefix. This can be used to avoid
+ leaking private tags from the repository.
--always::
Show uniquely abbreviated commit object as fallback.
of commits which would be displayed by "git log v1.0.4..parent".
The hash suffix is "-g" + 7-char abbreviation for the tip commit
of parent (which was `2414721b194453f058079d897d13c4e377f92dc6`).
+The "g" prefix stands for "git" and is used to allow describing the version of
+a software depending on the SCM the software is managed with. This is useful
+in an environment where people may use different SCMs.
-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
v1.0.4
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
+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.
+abbreviation of the input committish's SHA-1.
If multiple tags were found during the walk then the tag which
has the fewest commits different from the input committish will be
the number of commits which would be shown by `git log tag..input`
will be the smallest number of commits possible.
-
-Author
-------
-Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>, but somewhat
-butchered by Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>. Later significantly
-updated by Shawn Pearce <spearce@spearce.org>.
-
-Documentation
---------------
-Documentation by David Greaves, Junio C Hamano and the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>.
-
GIT
---
Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite