GIT-DESCRIBE(1) Git Manual GIT-DESCRIBE(1)NAMEgit-describe - Show the most recent tag that is reachable from a commit
SYNOPSISgit-describe [--all] [--tags] [--contains] [--abbrev=<n>]
<committish>...
DESCRIPTION
The command finds the most recent tag that is reachable from a 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
<committish>
The object name of the committish.
--all Instead of using only the annotated tags, use any ref found in
.git/refs/.
--tags Instead of using only the annotated tags, use any tag found in
.git/refs/tags.
--contains
Instead of finding the tag that predates the commit, find the
tag that comes after the commit, and thus contains it.
Automatically implies --tags.
--abbrev=<n>
Instead of using the default 8 hexadecimal digits as the
abbreviated object name, use <n> digits.
--candidates=<n>
Instead of considering only the 10 most recent tags as
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
With something like git.git current tree, I get:
[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, describe has added the
number of additional commits ("14") and an abbreviated object name for
the commit itself ("2414721") at the end.
The number of additional commits is the number 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).
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
With --all, the command can use branch heads as references, so 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^
heads/lt/describe-7-g975b
With --abbrev set to 0, the command can be used to find the closest
tagname without any suffix:
[torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --abbrev=0 v1.0.5^2
tags/v1.0.0
SEARCH STRATEGY
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 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" will be the
smallest number of commits possible.
AUTHOR
Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>, but somewhat butchered
by Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>. 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 git(7) suite
Git 1.5.5.2 10/21/2008 GIT-DESCRIBE(1)
