6 git-describe - Show the most recent tag that is reachable from a commit
11 'git-describe' [--all] [--tags] [--contains] [--abbrev=<n>] <committish>...
15 The command finds the most recent tag that is reachable from a
16 commit. If the tag points to the commit, then only the tag is
17 shown. Otherwise, it suffixes the tag name with the number of
18 additional commits on top of the tagged object and the
19 abbreviated object name of the most recent commit.
25 The object name of the committish.
28 Instead of using only the annotated tags, use any ref
29 found in `.git/refs/`.
32 Instead of using only the annotated tags, use any tag
33 found in `.git/refs/tags`.
36 Instead of finding the tag that predates the commit, find
37 the tag that comes after the commit, and thus contains it.
38 Automatically implies --tags.
41 Instead of using the default 8 hexadecimal digits as the
42 abbreviated object name, use <n> digits.
45 Instead of considering only the 10 most recent tags as
46 candidates to describe the input committish consider
47 up to <n> candidates. Increasing <n> above 10 will take
48 slightly longer but may produce a more accurate result.
51 Verbosely display information about the searching strategy
52 being employed to standard error. The tag name will still
53 be printed to standard out.
58 With something like git.git current tree, I get:
60 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git-describe parent
63 i.e. the current head of my "parent" branch is based on v1.0.4,
64 but since it has a handful commits on top of that,
65 describe has added the number of additional commits ("14") and
66 an abbreviated object name for the commit itself ("2414721")
69 The number of additional commits is the number
70 of commits which would be displayed by "git log v1.0.4..parent".
71 The hash suffix is "-g" + 7-char abbreviation for the tip commit
72 of parent (which was `2414721b194453f058079d897d13c4e377f92dc6`).
74 Doing a "git-describe" on a tag-name will just show the tag name:
76 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git-describe v1.0.4
79 With --all, the command can use branch heads as references, so
80 the output shows the reference path as well:
82 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --all --abbrev=4 v1.0.5^2
85 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --all HEAD^
86 heads/lt/describe-7-g975b
88 With --abbrev set to 0, the command can be used to find the
89 closest tagname without any suffix:
91 [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --abbrev=0 v1.0.5^2
97 For each committish supplied "git describe" will first look for
98 a tag which tags exactly that commit. Annotated tags will always
99 be preferred over lightweight tags, and tags with newer dates will
100 always be preferred over tags with older dates. If an exact match
101 is found, its name will be output and searching will stop.
103 If an exact match was not found "git describe" will walk back
104 through the commit history to locate an ancestor commit which
105 has been tagged. The ancestor's tag will be output along with an
106 abbreviation of the input committish's SHA1.
108 If multiple tags were found during the walk then the tag which
109 has the fewest commits different from the input committish will be
110 selected and output. Here fewest commits different is defined as
111 the number of commits which would be shown by "git log tag..input"
112 will be the smallest number of commits possible.
117 Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>, but somewhat
118 butchered by Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>. Later significantly
119 updated by Shawn Pearce <spearce@spearce.org>.
123 Documentation by David Greaves, Junio C Hamano and the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>.
127 Part of the linkgit:git[7] suite