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-rw-r--r--Documentation/git-describe.txt74
1 files changed, 45 insertions, 29 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/git-describe.txt b/Documentation/git-describe.txt
index b231dbb947..d20ca402a1 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>] <commit-ish>...
+'git describe' [--all] [--tags] [--contains] [--abbrev=<n>] --dirty[=<mark>]
DESCRIPTION
-----------
@@ -24,17 +26,22 @@ see the -a and -s options to linkgit:git-tag[1].
OPTIONS
-------
-<committish>...::
- Committish object names to describe.
+<commit-ish>...::
+ Commit-ish 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/`. This option enables matching
- any known branch, remote branch, or lightweight tag.
+ found in `refs/` namespace. 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`. This option enables matching
+ found in `refs/tags` namespace. This option enables matching
a lightweight (non-annotated) tag.
--contains::
@@ -44,11 +51,13 @@ OPTIONS
--abbrev=<n>::
Instead of using the default 7 hexadecimal digits as the
- abbreviated object name, use <n> digits.
+ 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
- candidates to describe the input committish consider
+ candidates to describe the input commit-ish consider
up to <n> candidates. Increasing <n> above 10 will take
slightly longer but may produce a more accurate result.
An <n> of 0 will cause only exact matches to be output.
@@ -68,16 +77,22 @@ 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
- leaking private tags made from the repository).
+ Only consider tags matching the given `glob(7)` pattern,
+ excluding the "refs/tags/" prefix. This can be used to avoid
+ leaking private tags from the repository.
--always::
Show uniquely abbreviated commit object as fallback.
+--first-parent::
+ 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.
+
EXAMPLES
--------
@@ -96,8 +111,11 @@ 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
v1.0.4
@@ -108,7 +126,7 @@ 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
@@ -117,37 +135,35 @@ 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 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
+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.
+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 committish will be
+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.
-
-Author
-------
-Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>, but somewhat
-butchered by Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>. 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