GIT-DESCRIBE(1) | Git Manual | GIT-DESCRIBE(1) |
NAME
git-describe - Give an object a human readable name based on an available ref
SYNOPSIS
git describe [--all] [--tags] [--contains] [--abbrev=<n>] [<commit-ish>...] git describe [--all] [--tags] [--contains] [--abbrev=<n>] --dirty[=<mark>] git describe <blob>
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. The result is a "human-readable" object name which can also be used to identify the commit to other git commands.
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).
If the given object refers to a blob, it will be described as <commit-ish>:<path>, such that the blob can be found at <path> in the <commit-ish>, which itself describes the first commit in which this blob occurs in a reverse revision walk from HEAD.
OPTIONS
<commit-ish>...
--dirty[=<mark>], --broken[=<mark>]
--all
--tags
--contains
--abbrev=<n>
--candidates=<n>
--exact-match
--debug
--long
--match <pattern>
--exclude <pattern>
--always
--first-parent
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" + an unambiguous abbreviation for the tip commit of parent (which was 2414721b194453f058079d897d13c4e377f92dc6). The length of the abbreviation scales as the repository grows, using the approximate number of objects in the repository and a bit of math around the birthday paradox, and defaults to a minimum of 7. The "g" prefix stands for "git" and is used to allow describing the version 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 commit-ish 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 commit-ish’s SHA-1. If --first-parent was specified then the walk will only consider the first parent of each commit.
If multiple tags were found during the walk then the tag which has the fewest commits different from the input commit-ish 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.
BUGS
Tree objects as well as tag objects not pointing at commits, cannot be described. When describing blobs, the lightweight tags pointing at blobs are ignored, but the blob is still described as <commit-ish>:<path> despite the lightweight tag being favorable.
GIT
Part of the git(1) suite
11/25/2024 | Git 2.47.1 |