From 492cf3f72f9d8a0308cc42a9ffc00ef782c88a20 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Gisle Aas Date: Thu, 29 Oct 2009 22:29:35 +0100 Subject: [PATCH] More precise description of 'git describe --abbrev' Also adds a note about why the output in the examples might give different output today. Signed-off-by: Gisle Aas Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano --- Documentation/git-describe.txt | 17 +++++++++++++---- 1 file changed, 13 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-) diff --git a/Documentation/git-describe.txt b/Documentation/git-describe.txt index b231dbb947..e9dbca7d87 100644 --- a/Documentation/git-describe.txt +++ b/Documentation/git-describe.txt @@ -44,7 +44,9 @@ OPTIONS --abbrev=:: Instead of using the default 7 hexadecimal digits as the - abbreviated object name, use digits. + abbreviated object name, use digits, or as many digits + as needed to form a unique object name. An of 0 + will suppress long format, only showing the closest tag. --candidates=:: Instead of considering only the 10 most recent tags as @@ -68,8 +70,8 @@ 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 :: Only consider tags matching the given pattern (can be used to avoid @@ -108,7 +110,7 @@ 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 @@ -117,6 +119,13 @@ 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 this command, 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 ---------------