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Update describe documentation.
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Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>
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Junio C Hamano committed Jan 28, 2007
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31 changes: 22 additions & 9 deletions Documentation/git-describe.txt
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -14,8 +14,8 @@ DESCRIPTION
-----------
The command finds the most recent tag that is reachable from a
commit, and if the commit itself is pointed at by the tag, shows
the tag. Otherwise, it suffixes the tag name with abbreviated
object name of the commit.
the tag. Otherwise, it suffixes the tag name with the number of
additional commits and the abbreviated object name of the commit.


OPTIONS
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -52,12 +52,18 @@ EXAMPLES
With something like git.git current tree, I get:

[torvalds@g5 git]$ git-describe parent
v1.0.4-g2414721b
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, it has added the
git hash of the thing to the end: "-g" + 8-char shorthand for
the commit `2414721b194453f058079d897d13c4e377f92dc6`.
but since it has a handful 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`).

Doing a "git-describe" on a tag-name will just show the tag name:

Expand All @@ -68,10 +74,16 @@ 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-g975b
tags/v1.0.0-21-g975b

[torvalds@g5 git]$ git describe --all HEAD^
heads/lt/describe-g975b
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

SEARCH STRATEGY
---------------
Expand All @@ -97,7 +109,8 @@ 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>
butchered by Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>. Later significantly
updated by Shawn Pearce <spearce@spearce.org>.

Documentation
--------------
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