git-describe.html - external/gitster/git-htmldocs - Git at Google

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 <body class="manpage">
 <div id="header">
 <h1>
 git-describe(1) Manual Page
 </h1>
 <h2>NAME</h2>
 <div class="sectionbody">
 <p>git-describe -
  Give an object a human readable name based on an available ref
 </p>
 </div>
 </div>
 <div id="content">
 <div class="sect1">
 <h2 id="_synopsis">SYNOPSIS</h2>
 <div class="sectionbody">
 <div class="verseblock">
 <pre class="content"><em>git describe</em> [--all] [--tags] [--contains] [--abbrev=&lt;n&gt;] [&lt;commit-ish&gt;&#8230;]
 <em>git describe</em> [--all] [--tags] [--contains] [--abbrev=&lt;n&gt;] --dirty[=&lt;mark&gt;]
 <em>git describe</em> &lt;blob&gt;</pre>
 <div class="attribution">
 </div></div>
 </div>
 </div>
 <div class="sect1">
 <h2 id="_description">DESCRIPTION</h2>
 <div class="sectionbody">
 <div class="paragraph"><p>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.</p></div>
 <div class="paragraph"><p>By default (without --all or --tags) <code>git describe</code> only shows
 annotated tags. For more information about creating annotated tags
 see the -a and -s options to <a href="git-tag.html">git-tag(1)</a>.</p></div>
 <div class="paragraph"><p>If the given object refers to a blob, it will be described
 as <code>&lt;commit-ish&gt;:&lt;path&gt;</code>, such that the blob can be found
 at <code>&lt;path&gt;</code> in the <code>&lt;commit-ish&gt;</code>, which itself describes the
 first commit in which this blob occurs in a reverse revision walk
 from HEAD.</p></div>
 </div>
 </div>
 <div class="sect1">
 <h2 id="_options">OPTIONS</h2>
 <div class="sectionbody">
 <div class="dlist"><dl>
 <dt class="hdlist1">
 &lt;commit-ish&gt;&#8230;
 </dt>
 <dd>
 <p>
  Commit-ish object names to describe. Defaults to HEAD if omitted.
 </p>
 </dd>
 <dt class="hdlist1">
 --dirty[=&lt;mark&gt;]
 </dt>
 <dt class="hdlist1">
 --broken[=&lt;mark&gt;]
 </dt>
 <dd>
 <p>
  Describe the state of the working tree. When the working
  tree matches HEAD, the output is the same as "git describe
  HEAD". If the working tree has local modification "-dirty"
  is appended to it. If a repository is corrupt and Git
  cannot determine if there is local modification, Git will
  error out, unless &#8216;--broken&#8217; is given, which appends
  the suffix "-broken" instead.
 </p>
 </dd>
 <dt class="hdlist1">
 --all
 </dt>
 <dd>
 <p>
  Instead of using only the annotated tags, use any ref
  found in <code>refs/</code> namespace. This option enables matching
  any known branch, remote-tracking branch, or lightweight tag.
 </p>
 </dd>
 <dt class="hdlist1">
 --tags
 </dt>
 <dd>
 <p>
  Instead of using only the annotated tags, use any tag
  found in <code>refs/tags</code> namespace. This option enables matching
  a lightweight (non-annotated) tag.
 </p>
 </dd>
 <dt class="hdlist1">
 --contains
 </dt>
 <dd>
 <p>
  Instead of finding the tag that predates the commit, find
  the tag that comes after the commit, and thus contains it.
  Automatically implies --tags.
 </p>
 </dd>
 <dt class="hdlist1">
 --abbrev=&lt;n&gt;
 </dt>
 <dd>
 <p>
  Instead of using the default 7 hexadecimal digits as the
  abbreviated object name, use &lt;n&gt; digits, or as many digits
  as needed to form a unique object name. An &lt;n&gt; of 0
  will suppress long format, only showing the closest tag.
 </p>
 </dd>
 <dt class="hdlist1">
 --candidates=&lt;n&gt;
 </dt>
 <dd>
 <p>
  Instead of considering only the 10 most recent tags as
  candidates to describe the input commit-ish consider
  up to &lt;n&gt; candidates. Increasing &lt;n&gt; above 10 will take
  slightly longer but may produce a more accurate result.
  An &lt;n&gt; of 0 will cause only exact matches to be output.
 </p>
 </dd>
 <dt class="hdlist1">
 --exact-match
 </dt>
 <dd>
 <p>
  Only output exact matches (a tag directly references the
  supplied commit). This is a synonym for --candidates=0.
 </p>
 </dd>
 <dt class="hdlist1">
 --debug
 </dt>
 <dd>
 <p>
  Verbosely display information about the searching strategy
  being employed to standard error. The tag name will still
  be printed to standard out.
 </p>
 </dd>
 <dt class="hdlist1">
 --long
 </dt>
 <dd>
 <p>
  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&#8230;.).
 </p>
 </dd>
 <dt class="hdlist1">
 --match &lt;pattern&gt;
 </dt>
 <dd>
 <p>
  Only consider tags matching the given <code>glob(7)</code> pattern,
  excluding the "refs/tags/" prefix. If used with <code>--all</code>, it also
  considers local branches and remote-tracking references matching the
  pattern, excluding respectively "refs/heads/" and "refs/remotes/"
  prefix; references of other types are never considered. If given
  multiple times, a list of patterns will be accumulated, and tags
  matching any of the patterns will be considered. Use <code>--no-match</code> to
  clear and reset the list of patterns.
 </p>
 </dd>
 <dt class="hdlist1">
 --exclude &lt;pattern&gt;
 </dt>
 <dd>
 <p>
  Do not consider tags matching the given <code>glob(7)</code> pattern, excluding
  the "refs/tags/" prefix. If used with <code>--all</code>, it also does not consider
  local branches and remote-tracking references matching the pattern,
  excluding respectively "refs/heads/" and "refs/remotes/" prefix;
  references of other types are never considered. If given multiple times,
  a list of patterns will be accumulated and tags matching any of the
  patterns will be excluded. When combined with --match a tag will be
  considered when it matches at least one --match pattern and does not
  match any of the --exclude patterns. Use <code>--no-exclude</code> to clear and
  reset the list of patterns.
 </p>
 </dd>
 <dt class="hdlist1">
 --always
 </dt>
 <dd>
 <p>
  Show uniquely abbreviated commit object as fallback.
 </p>
 </dd>
 <dt class="hdlist1">
 --first-parent
 </dt>
 <dd>
 <p>
  Follow only the first parent commit upon seeing a merge commit.
  This is useful when you wish to not match tags on branches merged
  in the history of the target commit.
 </p>
 </dd>
 </dl></div>
 </div>
 </div>
 <div class="sect1">
 <h2 id="_examples">EXAMPLES</h2>
 <div class="sectionbody">
 <div class="paragraph"><p>With something like git.git current tree, I get:</p></div>
 <div class="literalblock">
 <div class="content">
 <pre><code>[torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe parent
 v1.0.4-14-g2414721</code></pre>
 </div></div>
 <div class="paragraph"><p>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.</p></div>
 <div class="paragraph"><p>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 <code>2414721b194453f058079d897d13c4e377f92dc6</code>).
 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.</p></div>
 <div class="paragraph"><p>Doing a <em>git describe</em> on a tag-name will just show the tag name:</p></div>
 <div class="literalblock">
 <div class="content">
 <pre><code>[torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe v1.0.4
 v1.0.4</code></pre>
 </div></div>
 <div class="paragraph"><p>With --all, the command can use branch heads as references, so
 the output shows the reference path as well:</p></div>
 <div class="literalblock">
 <div class="content">
 <pre><code>[torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --all --abbrev=4 v1.0.5^2
 tags/v1.0.0-21-g975b</code></pre>
 </div></div>
 <div class="literalblock">
 <div class="content">
 <pre><code>[torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --all --abbrev=4 HEAD^
 heads/lt/describe-7-g975b</code></pre>
 </div></div>
 <div class="paragraph"><p>With --abbrev set to 0, the command can be used to find the
 closest tagname without any suffix:</p></div>
 <div class="literalblock">
 <div class="content">
 <pre><code>[torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --abbrev=0 v1.0.5^2
 tags/v1.0.0</code></pre>
 </div></div>
 <div class="paragraph"><p>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.</p></div>
 </div>
 </div>
 <div class="sect1">
 <h2 id="_search_strategy">SEARCH STRATEGY</h2>
 <div class="sectionbody">
 <div class="paragraph"><p>For each commit-ish supplied, <em>git describe</em> 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.</p></div>
 <div class="paragraph"><p>If an exact match was not found, <em>git describe</em> will walk back
 through the commit history to locate an ancestor commit which
 has been tagged. The ancestor&#8217;s tag will be output along with an
 abbreviation of the input commit-ish&#8217;s SHA-1. If <code>--first-parent</code> was
 specified then the walk will only consider the first parent of each
 commit.</p></div>
 <div class="paragraph"><p>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 <code>git log tag..input</code>
 will be the smallest number of commits possible.</p></div>
 </div>
 </div>
 <div class="sect1">
 <h2 id="_bugs">BUGS</h2>
 <div class="sectionbody">
 <div class="paragraph"><p>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 &lt;committ-ish&gt;:&lt;path&gt; despite the lightweight
 tag being favorable.</p></div>
 </div>
 </div>
 <div class="sect1">
 <h2 id="_git">GIT</h2>
 <div class="sectionbody">
 <div class="paragraph"><p>Part of the <a href="git.html">git(1)</a> suite</p></div>
 </div>
 </div>
 </div>
 <div id="footnotes"><hr /></div>
 <div id="footer">
 <div id="footer-text">
 Last updated
  2018-10-16 16:37:05 JST
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