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736 <div id="header">
737 <h1>
738 git-describe(1) Manual Page
739 </h1>
740 <h2>NAME</h2>
741 <div class="sectionbody">
742 <p>git-describe -
743 Give an object a human readable name based on an available ref
744 </p>
745 </div>
746 </div>
747 <div id="content">
748 <div class="sect1">
749 <h2 id="_synopsis">SYNOPSIS</h2>
750 <div class="sectionbody">
751 <div class="verseblock">
752 <pre class="content"><em>git describe</em> [--all] [--tags] [--contains] [--abbrev=&lt;n&gt;] [&lt;commit-ish&gt;&#8230;]
753 <em>git describe</em> [--all] [--tags] [--contains] [--abbrev=&lt;n&gt;] --dirty[=&lt;mark&gt;]
754 <em>git describe</em> &lt;blob&gt;</pre>
755 <div class="attribution">
756 </div></div>
757 </div>
758 </div>
759 <div class="sect1">
760 <h2 id="_description">DESCRIPTION</h2>
761 <div class="sectionbody">
762 <div class="paragraph"><p>The command finds the most recent tag that is reachable from a
763 commit. If the tag points to the commit, then only the tag is
764 shown. Otherwise, it suffixes the tag name with the number of
765 additional commits on top of the tagged object and the
766 abbreviated object name of the most recent commit. The result
767 is a "human-readable" object name which can also be used to
768 identify the commit to other git commands.</p></div>
769 <div class="paragraph"><p>By default (without --all or --tags) <code>git describe</code> only shows
770 annotated tags. For more information about creating annotated tags
771 see the -a and -s options to <a href="git-tag.html">git-tag(1)</a>.</p></div>
772 <div class="paragraph"><p>If the given object refers to a blob, it will be described
773 as <code>&lt;commit-ish&gt;:&lt;path&gt;</code>, such that the blob can be found
774 at <code>&lt;path&gt;</code> in the <code>&lt;commit-ish&gt;</code>, which itself describes the
775 first commit in which this blob occurs in a reverse revision walk
776 from HEAD.</p></div>
777 </div>
778 </div>
779 <div class="sect1">
780 <h2 id="_options">OPTIONS</h2>
781 <div class="sectionbody">
782 <div class="dlist"><dl>
783 <dt class="hdlist1">
784 &lt;commit-ish&gt;&#8230;
785 </dt>
786 <dd>
788 Commit-ish object names to describe. Defaults to HEAD if omitted.
789 </p>
790 </dd>
791 <dt class="hdlist1">
792 --dirty[=&lt;mark&gt;]
793 </dt>
794 <dt class="hdlist1">
795 --broken[=&lt;mark&gt;]
796 </dt>
797 <dd>
799 Describe the state of the working tree. When the working
800 tree matches HEAD, the output is the same as "git describe
801 HEAD". If the working tree has local modification "-dirty"
802 is appended to it. If a repository is corrupt and Git
803 cannot determine if there is local modification, Git will
804 error out, unless &#8216;--broken&#8217; is given, which appends
805 the suffix "-broken" instead.
806 </p>
807 </dd>
808 <dt class="hdlist1">
809 --all
810 </dt>
811 <dd>
813 Instead of using only the annotated tags, use any ref
814 found in <code>refs/</code> namespace. This option enables matching
815 any known branch, remote-tracking branch, or lightweight tag.
816 </p>
817 </dd>
818 <dt class="hdlist1">
819 --tags
820 </dt>
821 <dd>
823 Instead of using only the annotated tags, use any tag
824 found in <code>refs/tags</code> namespace. This option enables matching
825 a lightweight (non-annotated) tag.
826 </p>
827 </dd>
828 <dt class="hdlist1">
829 --contains
830 </dt>
831 <dd>
833 Instead of finding the tag that predates the commit, find
834 the tag that comes after the commit, and thus contains it.
835 Automatically implies --tags.
836 </p>
837 </dd>
838 <dt class="hdlist1">
839 --abbrev=&lt;n&gt;
840 </dt>
841 <dd>
843 Instead of using the default number of hexadecimal digits (which
844 will vary according to the number of objects in the repository with
845 a default of 7) of the abbreviated object name, use &lt;n&gt; digits, or
846 as many digits as needed to form a unique object name. An &lt;n&gt; of 0
847 will suppress long format, only showing the closest tag.
848 </p>
849 </dd>
850 <dt class="hdlist1">
851 --candidates=&lt;n&gt;
852 </dt>
853 <dd>
855 Instead of considering only the 10 most recent tags as
856 candidates to describe the input commit-ish consider
857 up to &lt;n&gt; candidates. Increasing &lt;n&gt; above 10 will take
858 slightly longer but may produce a more accurate result.
859 An &lt;n&gt; of 0 will cause only exact matches to be output.
860 </p>
861 </dd>
862 <dt class="hdlist1">
863 --exact-match
864 </dt>
865 <dd>
867 Only output exact matches (a tag directly references the
868 supplied commit). This is a synonym for --candidates=0.
869 </p>
870 </dd>
871 <dt class="hdlist1">
872 --debug
873 </dt>
874 <dd>
876 Verbosely display information about the searching strategy
877 being employed to standard error. The tag name will still
878 be printed to standard out.
879 </p>
880 </dd>
881 <dt class="hdlist1">
882 --long
883 </dt>
884 <dd>
886 Always output the long format (the tag, the number of commits
887 and the abbreviated commit name) even when it matches a tag.
888 This is useful when you want to see parts of the commit object name
889 in "describe" output, even when the commit in question happens to be
890 a tagged version. Instead of just emitting the tag name, it will
891 describe such a commit as v1.2-0-gdeadbee (0th commit since tag v1.2
892 that points at object deadbee&#8230;.).
893 </p>
894 </dd>
895 <dt class="hdlist1">
896 --match &lt;pattern&gt;
897 </dt>
898 <dd>
900 Only consider tags matching the given <code>glob(7)</code> pattern,
901 excluding the "refs/tags/" prefix. If used with <code>--all</code>, it also
902 considers local branches and remote-tracking references matching the
903 pattern, excluding respectively "refs/heads/" and "refs/remotes/"
904 prefix; references of other types are never considered. If given
905 multiple times, a list of patterns will be accumulated, and tags
906 matching any of the patterns will be considered. Use <code>--no-match</code> to
907 clear and reset the list of patterns.
908 </p>
909 </dd>
910 <dt class="hdlist1">
911 --exclude &lt;pattern&gt;
912 </dt>
913 <dd>
915 Do not consider tags matching the given <code>glob(7)</code> pattern, excluding
916 the "refs/tags/" prefix. If used with <code>--all</code>, it also does not consider
917 local branches and remote-tracking references matching the pattern,
918 excluding respectively "refs/heads/" and "refs/remotes/" prefix;
919 references of other types are never considered. If given multiple times,
920 a list of patterns will be accumulated and tags matching any of the
921 patterns will be excluded. When combined with --match a tag will be
922 considered when it matches at least one --match pattern and does not
923 match any of the --exclude patterns. Use <code>--no-exclude</code> to clear and
924 reset the list of patterns.
925 </p>
926 </dd>
927 <dt class="hdlist1">
928 --always
929 </dt>
930 <dd>
932 Show uniquely abbreviated commit object as fallback.
933 </p>
934 </dd>
935 <dt class="hdlist1">
936 --first-parent
937 </dt>
938 <dd>
940 Follow only the first parent commit upon seeing a merge commit.
941 This is useful when you wish to not match tags on branches merged
942 in the history of the target commit.
943 </p>
944 </dd>
945 </dl></div>
946 </div>
947 </div>
948 <div class="sect1">
949 <h2 id="_examples">EXAMPLES</h2>
950 <div class="sectionbody">
951 <div class="paragraph"><p>With something like git.git current tree, I get:</p></div>
952 <div class="literalblock">
953 <div class="content">
954 <pre><code>[torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe parent
955 v1.0.4-14-g2414721</code></pre>
956 </div></div>
957 <div class="paragraph"><p>i.e. the current head of my "parent" branch is based on v1.0.4,
958 but since it has a few commits on top of that,
959 describe has added the number of additional commits ("14") and
960 an abbreviated object name for the commit itself ("2414721")
961 at the end.</p></div>
962 <div class="paragraph"><p>The number of additional commits is the number
963 of commits which would be displayed by "git log v1.0.4..parent".
964 The hash suffix is "-g" + an unambigous abbreviation for the tip commit
965 of parent (which was <code>2414721b194453f058079d897d13c4e377f92dc6</code>). The
966 length of the abbreviation scales as the repository grows, using the
967 approximate number of objects in the repository and a bit of math
968 around the birthday paradox, and defaults to a minimum of 7.
969 The "g" prefix stands for "git" and is used to allow describing the version of
970 a software depending on the SCM the software is managed with. This is useful
971 in an environment where people may use different SCMs.</p></div>
972 <div class="paragraph"><p>Doing a <em>git describe</em> on a tag-name will just show the tag name:</p></div>
973 <div class="literalblock">
974 <div class="content">
975 <pre><code>[torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe v1.0.4
976 v1.0.4</code></pre>
977 </div></div>
978 <div class="paragraph"><p>With --all, the command can use branch heads as references, so
979 the output shows the reference path as well:</p></div>
980 <div class="literalblock">
981 <div class="content">
982 <pre><code>[torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --all --abbrev=4 v1.0.5^2
983 tags/v1.0.0-21-g975b</code></pre>
984 </div></div>
985 <div class="literalblock">
986 <div class="content">
987 <pre><code>[torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --all --abbrev=4 HEAD^
988 heads/lt/describe-7-g975b</code></pre>
989 </div></div>
990 <div class="paragraph"><p>With --abbrev set to 0, the command can be used to find the
991 closest tagname without any suffix:</p></div>
992 <div class="literalblock">
993 <div class="content">
994 <pre><code>[torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --abbrev=0 v1.0.5^2
995 tags/v1.0.0</code></pre>
996 </div></div>
997 <div class="paragraph"><p>Note that the suffix you get if you type these commands today may be
998 longer than what Linus saw above when he ran these commands, as your
999 Git repository may have new commits whose object names begin with
1000 975b that did not exist back then, and "-g975b" suffix alone may not
1001 be sufficient to disambiguate these commits.</p></div>
1002 </div>
1003 </div>
1004 <div class="sect1">
1005 <h2 id="_search_strategy">SEARCH STRATEGY</h2>
1006 <div class="sectionbody">
1007 <div class="paragraph"><p>For each commit-ish supplied, <em>git describe</em> will first look for
1008 a tag which tags exactly that commit. Annotated tags will always
1009 be preferred over lightweight tags, and tags with newer dates will
1010 always be preferred over tags with older dates. If an exact match
1011 is found, its name will be output and searching will stop.</p></div>
1012 <div class="paragraph"><p>If an exact match was not found, <em>git describe</em> will walk back
1013 through the commit history to locate an ancestor commit which
1014 has been tagged. The ancestor&#8217;s tag will be output along with an
1015 abbreviation of the input commit-ish&#8217;s SHA-1. If <code>--first-parent</code> was
1016 specified then the walk will only consider the first parent of each
1017 commit.</p></div>
1018 <div class="paragraph"><p>If multiple tags were found during the walk then the tag which
1019 has the fewest commits different from the input commit-ish will be
1020 selected and output. Here fewest commits different is defined as
1021 the number of commits which would be shown by <code>git log tag..input</code>
1022 will be the smallest number of commits possible.</p></div>
1023 </div>
1024 </div>
1025 <div class="sect1">
1026 <h2 id="_bugs">BUGS</h2>
1027 <div class="sectionbody">
1028 <div class="paragraph"><p>Tree objects as well as tag objects not pointing at commits, cannot be described.
1029 When describing blobs, the lightweight tags pointing at blobs are ignored,
1030 but the blob is still described as &lt;committ-ish&gt;:&lt;path&gt; despite the lightweight
1031 tag being favorable.</p></div>
1032 </div>
1033 </div>
1034 <div class="sect1">
1035 <h2 id="_git">GIT</h2>
1036 <div class="sectionbody">
1037 <div class="paragraph"><p>Part of the <a href="git.html">git(1)</a> suite</p></div>
1038 </div>
1039 </div>
1040 </div>
1041 <div id="footnotes"><hr /></div>
1042 <div id="footer">
1043 <div id="footer-text">
1044 Last updated
1045 2021-06-09 23:21:48 PDT
1046 </div>
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