GIT-DESCRIBE(1)                                              Git Manual                                             GIT-DESCRIBE(1)

NAME
       git-describe - Give an object a human readable name based on an available ref

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

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. The result is a "human-readable" object name which can also be used to
       identify the commit to other git commands.

       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).

       If the given object refers to a blob, it will be described as <commit-ish>:<path>, such that the blob can be found at <path>
       in the <commit-ish>, which itself describes the first commit in which this blob occurs in a reverse revision walk from HEAD.

OPTIONS
       <commit-ish>...
           Commit-ish object names to describe. Defaults to HEAD if omitted.

       --dirty[=<mark>], --broken[=<mark>]
           Describe the state of the working tree. When the working tree matches HEAD, the output is the same as "git describe
           HEAD". If the working tree has local modification "-dirty" is appended to it. If a repository is corrupt and Git cannot
           determine if there is local modification, Git will error out, unless ‘--broken’ is given, which appends the suffix
           "-broken" instead.

       --all
           Instead of using only the annotated tags, use any ref 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 refs/tags namespace. 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 number of hexadecimal digits (which will vary according to the number of objects in the
           repository with a default of 7) of 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 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.

       --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 glob(7) pattern, excluding the "refs/tags/" prefix. If used with --all, it also
           considers local branches and remote-tracking references matching the pattern, excluding respectively "refs/heads/" and
           "refs/remotes/" prefix; references of other types are never considered. If given multiple times, a list of patterns will
           be accumulated, and tags matching any of the patterns will be considered. Use --no-match to clear and reset the list of
           patterns.

       --exclude <pattern>
           Do not consider tags matching the given glob(7) pattern, excluding the "refs/tags/" prefix. If used with --all, it also
           does not consider local branches and remote-tracking references matching the pattern, excluding respectively
           "refs/heads/" and "refs/remotes/" prefix; references of other types are never considered. If given multiple times, a
           list of patterns will be accumulated and tags matching any of the patterns will be excluded. When combined with --match
           a tag will be considered when it matches at least one --match pattern and does not match any of the --exclude patterns.
           Use --no-exclude to clear and reset the list of patterns.

       --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
       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" + an unambigous abbreviation for the tip commit of parent (which was
       2414721b194453f058079d897d13c4e377f92dc6). The length of the abbreviation scales as the repository grows, using the
       approximate number of objects in the repository and a bit of math around the birthday paradox, and defaults to a minimum of
       7. 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 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 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 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 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.

BUGS
       Tree objects as well as tag objects not pointing at commits, cannot be described. When describing blobs, the lightweight
       tags pointing at blobs are ignored, but the blob is still described as <committ-ish>:<path> despite the lightweight tag
       being favorable.

GIT
       Part of the git(1) suite

Git 2.39.2                                                   04/24/2023                                             GIT-DESCRIBE(1)