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-rw-r--r--Documentation/git-describe.txt17
1 files 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=<n>::
Instead of using the default 7 hexadecimal digits as the
- abbreviated object name, use <n> digits.
+ 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
@@ -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 <pattern>::
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.
+
+
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