DESCRIPTION
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The command finds the most recent tag that is reachable from a
- commit, and if the commit itself is pointed at by the tag, shows
- the tag. Otherwise, it suffixes the tag name with the number of
- additional commits and the abbreviated object name of the commit.
+ commit. If the tag points to the commit, then only the tag is
+ 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.
OPTIONS
candidates to describe the input committish consider
up to <n> candidates. Increasing <n> above 10 will take
slightly longer but may produce a more accurate result.
+ An <n> of 0 will cause only exact matches to be output.
+
+--exact-match::
+ Only output exact matches (a tag directly references the
+ supplied commit). This is a synonym for --candidates=0.
--debug::
Verbosely display information about the searching strategy
being employed to standard error. The tag name will still
be printed to standard out.
+--long::
+ Always output the long format (the tag, the number of commits
+ and the abbreviated commit name) even when it matches a tag.
+ 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....).
+
+--match <pattern>::
+ Only consider tags matching the given pattern (can be used to avoid
+ leaking private tags made from the repository).
+
EXAMPLES
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