git-describe
(1)
Name
git-describe - Show the most recent tag that is reachable
from a commit
Synopsis
git describe [--all] [--tags] [--contains] [--abbrev=<n>] <committish>...
git describe [--all] [--tags] [--contains] [--abbrev=<n>] --dirty[=<mark>]
Description
Git Manual GIT-DESCRIBE(1)
NAME
git-describe - Show the most recent tag that is reachable
from a commit
SYNOPSIS
git describe [--all] [--tags] [--contains] [--abbrev=<n>] <committish>...
git describe [--all] [--tags] [--contains] [--abbrev=<n>] --dirty[=<mark>]
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.
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 git-tag(1).
OPTIONS
<committish>...
Committish object names to describe.
--dirty[=<mark>]
Describe the working tree. It means describe HEAD and
appends <mark> (-dirty by default) if the working tree
is dirty.
--all
Instead of using only the annotated tags, use any ref
found in .git/refs/. 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 a
lightweight (non-annotated) tag.
--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 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.
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--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-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 leaking private tags made from the
repository).
--always
Show uniquely abbreviated commit object as fallback.
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 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 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). The "g" prefix
stands for "git" and is used to allow describing the version
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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:
[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 --abbrev=4 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
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 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.
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Git Manual GIT-DESCRIBE(1)
GIT
Part of the git(1) suite
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following
attributes:
+---------------+--------------------------+
|ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
+---------------+--------------------------+
|Availability | developer/versioning/git |
+---------------+--------------------------+
|Stability | Uncommitted |
+---------------+--------------------------+
NOTES
This software was built from source available at
https://java.net/projects/solaris-userland. The original
community source was downloaded from http://git-
core.googlecode.com/files/git-1.7.9.2.tar.gz
Further information about this software can be found on the
open source community website at http://git-scm.com/.
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