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