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Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/git-describe.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/git-describe.txt | 69 |
1 files changed, 41 insertions, 28 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/git-describe.txt b/Documentation/git-describe.txt index 9f6f483186..039cce2e98 100644 --- a/Documentation/git-describe.txt +++ b/Documentation/git-describe.txt @@ -8,7 +8,9 @@ git-describe - Show the most recent tag that is reachable from a commit SYNOPSIS -------- -'git-describe' [--all] [--tags] [--contains] [--abbrev=<n>] <committish>... +[verse] +'git describe' [--all] [--tags] [--contains] [--abbrev=<n>] <committish>... +'git describe' [--all] [--tags] [--contains] [--abbrev=<n>] --dirty[=<mark>] DESCRIPTION ----------- @@ -18,19 +20,29 @@ 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 linkgit:git-tag[1]. OPTIONS ------- -<committish>:: - The object name of the committish. +<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/`. + 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`. + 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 @@ -38,8 +50,10 @@ OPTIONS Automatically implies --tags. --abbrev=<n>:: - Instead of using the default 8 hexadecimal digits as the - abbreviated object name, use <n> digits. + 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. --candidates=<n>:: Instead of considering only the 10 most recent tags as @@ -63,8 +77,8 @@ OPTIONS 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-deadbeef (0th commit since tag v1.2 - that points at object deadbeef....). + 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 @@ -78,11 +92,11 @@ EXAMPLES With something like git.git current tree, I get: - [torvalds@g5 git]$ git-describe parent + [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 handful commits on top of that, +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. @@ -91,10 +105,13 @@ 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 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: +Doing a 'git describe' on a tag-name will just show the tag name: - [torvalds@g5 git]$ git-describe v1.0.4 + [torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe v1.0.4 v1.0.4 With --all, the command can use branch heads as references, so @@ -103,7 +120,7 @@ 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 HEAD^ + [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 @@ -112,16 +129,23 @@ 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 +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 +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. @@ -129,20 +153,9 @@ 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" +the number of commits which would be shown by `git log tag..input` will be the smallest number of commits possible. - -Author ------- -Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>, but somewhat -butchered by Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>. Later significantly -updated by Shawn Pearce <spearce@spearce.org>. - -Documentation --------------- -Documentation by David Greaves, Junio C Hamano and the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>. - GIT --- Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite |