GIT-DESCRIBE(1)                                                GIT-DESCRIBE(1)



NAME
       git-describe - Show the most recent tag that is reachable from a commit

SYNOPSIS
       git describe [--all] [--tags] [--contains] [--abbrev=<n>] <committish>...
       git describe [--all] [--tags] [--contains] [--abbrev=<n>] --dirty[=<mark>]





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.


       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).


OPTIONS
       <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/. 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 a lightweight
              (non-annotated) tag.


       --contains
              Instead of finding the tag that predates the commit, find the
              tag that comes after the commit, and thus contains it.
              Automatically implies --tags.


       --abbrev=<n>
              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
              candidates to describe the input committish 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.


       --exact-match
              Only output exact matches (a tag directly references the
              supplied commit). This is a synonym for --candidates=0.


       --debug
              Verbosely display information about the searching strategy being
              employed to standard error. The tag name will still be printed
              to standard out.


       --long 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....).


       --match <pattern>
              Only consider tags matching the given pattern (can be used to
              avoid leaking private tags made from the repository).


       --always
              Show uniquely abbreviated commit object as fallback.


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" +
       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:

       [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 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 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 committish&#8217;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 will be the smallest
       number of commits possible.


GIT
       Part of the git(1) suite




                                                               GIT-DESCRIBE(1)
